Monday Catblogging

It looks like Eddie is going to be fine: dental issues again. So, we're going through the antibiotic course here, probably in preparation for more dental work. I'll get the blood work back tomorrow. Hint: for pilling cats that hate pilling, grind it up with the back of a spoon and mix with a little baby food. Works great.

I'm going to be spending the evening reconstructing the desktop: no, I didn't have a back up. Do you? What are you going to do about it?

Contact Info

Note the new email, effective today

[email protected]

Ooops

Hi, all

Sorry for the long absense. In order to complete the last six weeks of computer hassles, my hardrive crashed yesterday morning. Speedy repairs were completed yesterday afternoon by my heroic brother. But since I didn't have a paper copy of all the current numbers of my dial-up service, I was unable to get back on-line until the friendly service technician from Cox Cable plugged me in a few minutes ago. Blogging will be light this afternoon as I have (to top it all off) a very sick kittie who needs to go to the vet. Stay tuned, we'll return to our regularly schedule program as soon as possible.

Military Malfeasance

Who's Dying in Our War?
# The answer is Army Reservists and National Guardsmen such as Californian Patrick McCaffrey.

By Rone Tempest, Times Staff Writer

As the military occupation of Iraq approaches its third year, morale and recruitment issues have begun to surface. A 2004 battlefield survey conducted in Iraq for the Secretary of the Army showed that morale among the National Guard soldiers was "markedly lower" than that of active-duty soldiers. At the heart of the complaints, the survey results said, is the feeling among guardsmen that they are "treated like second-class citizens in the Army." More recently in New Mexico, where the California National Guard's 184th Infantry Regiment was preparing to be deployed to Iraq, soldiers complained to a Los Angeles Times reporter about poor training and inadequate equipment. "We are going to pay for this in blood," one said.

In a celebrated incident on Dec. 8 in Kuwait, Tennessee National Guard Spc. Thomas Wilson surprised Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld during an impromptu press conference, asking why Guard units were being sent into Iraq with inadequate armor on their vehicles. Cheered by his fellow soldiers, Wilson claimed that his unit was forced to rummage through local landfills for "rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass . . . to put on our vehicles to take into combat."

"I call it the 'question heard 'round the world,' " says military historian Col. Mike Doubler, a Tennessee native who served 14 years in the Army and nine years in the Guard. "There is a growing perception—among guardsmen and reservists—that there are two armies in Iraq."

It's likely no coincidence that on Dec. 17, National Guard Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum announced that, because of declining recruitment during the Iraq war, the service now will offer inducements to make reenlistment more attractive. Among the incentives: tripling retention bonuses from $5,000 to $15,000. Blum also announced that the number of Guard recruiters would be increased nationally from 2,700 to 4,100.

Experts predict that the first real test of the war's impact on the National Guard will come this spring, when soldiers returning from Iraq have their first opportunity to quit. "The fact is," says Kohn, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill professor, "we have worn these people out [and] taken advantage of their patriotism and service. Many of them are going to quit as soon as they get a chance."

This long article is worth the time. This is as fine an exposition of all of the issues around the use (and mis-use) of the Guard and Reserve as I've read in the secular press.

Some units have lost 20% of their active strength to fatalities and injury. At that level, unit cohesion and functionality breaks down completely.

Behind the Mask

'What a bloody charade'

By Robert Fisk

But there will be democracy in Iraq.

The media boys and girls will be expected to play along with this. "Transition of power", says the hourly logo on CNN's live coverage of the election, though the poll is for a parliament to write a constitution, and the men who will form a majority within it will have no power.

They have no control over their own oil, no authority over the streets of Baghdad, let alone the rest of the country, no workable army or loyal police force. Their only power is that of the American military and its 150 000 soldiers whom we could all see on the main intersections of Baghdad yesterday.

The big television networks have been given a list of five polling stations where they will be "allowed" to film. Close inspection of the list shows that four of the five are in Shi'ite Muslim areas - where the polling will probably be high - and one in an upmarket Sunni area, where it will be moderate.

The majority Shi'as, oppressed under Hussein, are expected to take a majority in the polling at the expense of the formerly dominant Sunnis.

The reality is that much of Iraq has become a free-fire zone
Every working-class Sunni polling station will be out of bounds to the press. I wonder if the television lads will tell us that today when they show voters "flocking" to the polls.

In the Karada district, we found three truckloads of youths on Saturday, all brandishing Iraqi flags, all - like the unemployed who have been sticking posters to Baghdad's walls - paid by the government to "advertise" the election. And there was a cameraman from Iraqi state television, of course, which is controlled by Iyad Allawi's "interim" government.

The "real" story is outside Baghdad, in the tens of thousands of square kilometres outside the government's control and beyond the sight of independent journalists, especially in the four Sunni Muslim provinces which are at the heart of Iraq's insurrection.

Right up to the election hour, US jets were continuing to bomb "terrorist targets", the latest in the city of Ramadi, which - although US President George Bush and Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair do not say so - is now in the hands of the insurgents as surely as Fallujah was before the Americans destroyed it.

Every month since Allawi, the former CIA agent, was appointed premier, American air strikes on Iraq have been increasing exponentially.

There are no "embedded" reporters on the giant American air base at Qatar or aboard the US carriers in the Gulf from which these ever increasing and ever more lethal sorties are being flown. They go unrecorded, unreported, part of the "fantasy" war which is all too real to the victims but hidden from us journalists.

The reality is that much of Iraq has become a free-fire zone (for reference, see under "Vietnam") and the Americans are conducting this secret war as efficiently and as ruthlessly as they conducted their earlier bombing campaign against Iraq between 1991 and 2003, an air raid a day, or two raids, or three. Then they were attacking Hussein's "military targets" in Iraq.

Now they are attacking "foreign terrorist targets" or "anti-Iraqi forces": I especially like this one, since the foreigners involved in this violence happen in reality to be Americans who are mostly attacking Iraqis.

Christopher Allbritton live blogged the election from Baghdad and reports:

12:29:48 PM Interesting. I'm watching CNN International, and the shots of long lines and happy voters are almost all coming from Iraqi Kurdistan where the voters are motivated and the environment is (relatively) safe. The rub is that CNNi is not identifying the images as coming from Kurdistan; the only way I knew it was from up north was the single shot of someone waving a Kurdish flag. But if you don't know what the flag looks like (red, white and green bars with a yellow starburst in the center), as I suspect most Americans don't, you wouldn't know the context of these images. Shi'ites are also coming out in droves in the south. But Sunnis are staying home. I will be surprised if the Sunni vote hits double digits at this point.

It's pretty clear that everything we are going to see on television today is heavily stage managed and will be heavily propagandized. Chris is reporting a basically optimistic view of the elections, but I think Fisk's point of view needs to be taken very seriously. If the Iraqis think that things should change because they've held an election and things don't change, the anger at the occupation will only increase.

A River in Egypt

U.S. Is Close to Eliminating AIDS in Infants, Officials Say
By MARC SANTORA

Published: January 30, 2005

AIDS among infants, which only a decade ago took the lives of hundreds of babies a year and left doctors in despair, may be on the verge of being eliminated in the United States, public health officials say.

In 1990, as many as 2,000 babies were born infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS; now, that number has been reduced to a bit more than 200 a year, according to health officials. In New York City, the center of the epidemic, there were 321 newborns infected with H.I.V. in 1990, the year the virus peaked among newborns in the city. In 2003, five babies were born with the virus.

Across the country, mother-to-child transmission of H.I.V. has dropped so sharply that public health officials now talk about wiping it out.

"This is a dramatic and wonderful success story," said Dr. Vicki Peters, the head of pediatric surveillance for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. This winter, Dr. Peters presented a report in Bangkok for World AIDS Day documenting the improvement in New York.

The success in fighting mother-to-child transmission, a sweeping victory for public health officials, was made possible largely because of better drugs, but aggressive public education and testing, as well as cooperation at the federal and local levels, also played a significant role.

While this is undeniably good news, there is other news which isn't so good, but you have to dig in order to find it. This comes courtesy of Revere at Effect Measure:

"We're Number One! We're Number One!"

Yes, we're Number One. In sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), anyway.

Or maybe it's just a "family values" example of justifiable homicide for disobedience?

Facts on the Ground

Deadline for Troop Withdrawal Ruled Out

By Bradley Graham and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 30, 2005; Page A01

The Bush administration has for now ruled out creating a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq after today's elections, but military commanders have charted a plan to have Iraqi security forces begin taking the lead in combat operations in certain parts of the country as early as spring.

U.S. officials have identified areas in southern and northern Iraq that have remained relatively free of violence as the best candidates for a piecemeal shift in military responsibilities over the months ahead. Under this approach, as Iraqi forces take on more of the counterinsurgency mission, some U.S. troops would assume an emergency backup role or shift to training Iraqi units, and others might leave the country, according to administration officials and others familiar with the plan.

Under optimal conditions, commanders anticipate possibly being able to withdraw, sometime this spring or summer, three of 20 brigades in Iraq, or about 15,000 troops. That would lower the level of U.S. forces in Iraq to where it was before it was raised to 150,000 troops last month.

More reductions, however, are considered unlikely until the end of 2005 or early 2006. Officials said they will look at establishing a phased pullout predicated on achieving certain benchmarks, basing it on conditions on the ground rather than dates on a calendar.

The question of U.S. withdrawal has become especially acute in Washington in the days leading up to today's elections, which will open a new phase in the U.S. involvement in Iraq. White House officials worry that Americans will see the vote as a natural turning point and expect quick reductions in U.S. forces afterward. In the face of growing pressure in Congress to begin bringing troops home, President Bush has tried to prepare the public for a long-term deployment.

"As democracy takes hold in Iraq, America's mission there will continue," Bush said in his weekly radio address yesterday. "Our military forces, diplomats and civilian personnel will help the newly elected government of Iraq establish security and train Iraqi military police and other forces. Terrorist violence will not end with the election. Yet the terrorists will fail, because the Iraqi people reject their ideology of murder."

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) last week called on Bush to begin withdrawing U.S. troops "immediately," with a complete pullout by early next year. Other Democrats have begun voicing similar proposals. So far, congressional Republicans remain solidly behind the president but privately fret that the administration has no exit strategy and that the political heat for a timetable will reach a boiling point.

First of all, "murder" isn't an ideology. This isn't even good rhetoric. A majority of Iraqis may reject murder as a tactic, but that doesn't really change anything, does it?

Next, how is this not an occupation when we have a 1.5 billion dollar embassy in Baghdad staffed by 3,700? That's not an embassy, that's a proto-government. With 150,000 troops in country, Iraq isn't a sovereign nation, it is at best a protectorate.

I can see Bush's lips moving, but the sounds he is making don't make any sense.

Bloodbath

Two Americans Dead in U.S. Embassy Bombing
Suicide Bomber Also Kills Eight in a Kurdish Town

By BASSEM MROUE
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, January 29, 2005; 2:33 PM

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Insurgents hit the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad with a rocket, killing two Americans, set off explosions that killed eight Iraqis and a U.S. soldier and blasted polling places across the country Saturday as Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government urged Iraqis to overcome their fear of violence and vote in landmark elections.

The strike in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone was a dramatic sign of guerrillas' ability to hit at the heart of power in Iraq even as the U.S. and Iraqi militaries took some of their strictest security measures ever for the election, imposing a strict lockdown in the capital and large parts of the country.

The rocket hit the embassy's compound after nightfall, near the building itself, an embassy official said. A civilian and a Navy sailor, both assigned to the embassy, died and four Americans were injured.

During the day, bursts of heavy machine gun fire rattled through central Baghdad at midday, and several heavy explosions shook the downtown area in the afternoon. A U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in a western district of the capital, the military said.

Iraqi police and soldiers set up checkpoints through streets largely devoid of traffic, with a nighttime curfew imposed across the country and the borders sealed. Seven American soldiers were killed Friday in the Baghdad area, including two pilots who died in the crash of their OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter.

West of the capital, in the insurgent bastion of Ramadi, five Iraqis with hands tied behind their backs were found slain Saturday on a city street. One of the bodies was decapitated. Militants accused them of working for the Americans.

Iraqi forces expected to do little to stop election day violence

By Tom Lasseter
Knight Ridder Newspapers

But the security scene across Iraq is a stark reminder of how unprepared the Iraqis are as Sunday's vote approaches:

-In Mosul, violence remains uncontrolled, despite the presence of thousands of American troops and more than 4,000 Iraqi police and army reinforcements sent to supplement the 8,000 Iraqis already on duty there. Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, who's in charge of American forces there, says that the challenge in Mosul is the lack of a "credible and capable police force."

-There are 11 Iraqi army battalions in the areas controlled by the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division south of Mosul, each with about 900 men and based in key cities such as Samarra, Tikrit, Baqouba, Balad and Kirkuk. Only two or three are capable of conducting operations much beyond roadblocks, U.S. officers say. Infiltration remains a major problem. Soldiers from the 1st Infantry arrested one battalion commander for allegedly collaborating with the insurgents.

-More than four months after U.S. and Iraqi forces retook Samarra from insurgents, U.S. and Iraqi units are still waiting for the arrival of new police recruits being trained in Jordan or Baghdad. Insurgents carry out an average of five attacks a day there, according to Maj. Gen. John R.S. Batiste, commander of the 1st Infantry Division.

-In Baghdad, where there are seven Iraqi army battalions, many of the soldiers wear ski masks and street clothes to hide their identities out of fear that insurgents will kill their families.

U.S. troops have been told to let Iraqi soldiers and policemen guard the country's 5,500 polling places, to avoid images of Iraqis voting under the shadow of American guns.

But U.S. troops also have been told that they'll have to respond quickly to major attacks and that they'll need to enforce a ban on nearly all vehicle traffic across the country beginning Friday.

Iraqi soldiers and policemen have been tasked with searching everyone who comes to vote and with securing the immediate areas around the polling places, U.S. officers say. Soldiers with the 1st Cavalry Division in Baghdad are planning to search houses around voting places.

U.S. soldiers openly consider Iraqi troops either dangerously inept or agents of the insurgency.

"The Iraqi army guys go out with us, but all they do is pull security," said Sgt. William Amundson, 27, of Middletown, N.Y., who's serving with the 25th Infantry Division in Mosul. Even when they're only standing guard, the Iraqis are to be avoided, soldiers say.

"Whenever something happens, they start shooting at everything. They shoot at us," Amundson said.

Capt. John Bohnen, who as a 1st Cavalry Division company commander often patrols with Iraqi troops in Baghdad, said he knows that some of the Iraqis are working for the insurgency.

"There's definitely rats inside," he said. "It's like pulling teeth to get U.S. soldiers to go out with me" on joint patrols with Iraqi troops.

A Betting Man

Bumper wayne49 pointed this out via Bad Attitudes:

Bill Gates, World's Richest Man, Bets Against Dollar (Update2)

Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Bill Gates, the world's richest person with a net worth of $46.6 billion, is betting against the U.S. dollar.

A week before Group of Seven officials meet to discuss currency policy, Trichet repeated the ECB's concern over the dollar's drop to record lows against the 12-nation euro currency.

What have I been telling you for over a year?

WHA'?

Slight Turnout Is Expected as Iraqis Abroad Begin to Vote
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: January 28, 2005

Filed at 10:49 p.m. ET

SOUTHGATE, Mich. (AP) -- Hundreds of Iraqis streamed into polling places in five U.S. cities Friday, the first day they could vote in their homeland's election. Nearly 26,000 people have registered to vote in five U.S. metropolitan areas with heavy Iraqi populations: Detroit, Chicago, Nashville, Tenn., Los Angeles and Washington.

Tens of thousands more are expected to vote in 13 other countries during balloting that runs through Sunday.

In Iraq and around the globe, the voting has been a cause for jubilation among Iraqis who have long been tormented by Saddam, but the threat of violence is still present. Insurgents bent on disrupting the election process have killed U.S. soldiers -- two more died Friday in Baghdad -- set off suicide car bombs, assassinated officials and bombed polling places.

Adim Altalibi struggled to hold back tears Friday after voting in an Iraqi election for the first time. All he could think about were his five nephews, all killed under Saddam Hussein's regime.

``We lost a lot of our young men and women struggling against Saddam Hussein. It's paid off now,'' said Altalibi, 55, an engineer who left Iraq in 1987 and cast his ballot Friday at a suburban Detroit voting site that was once a home-improvement store.

Isho Mishail, 40, a driving instructor who was voting at the Chicago polling place, said it is important for him to vote because he does not know if his relatives in Iraq will have the same luxury.

Insurgents ``went to the houses and threatened them, `If you go to the polls, we'll kill everyone in the house,''' Mishail said.

In the United States, organizers said lack of documentation, large travel distances, bad weather and concern about retribution could be keeping some Iraqis away from the polls. The number of people voting in the United States is expected to make up about 10 percent of the 240,000 Iraqi expatriates expected to cast ballots around the world.

To be eligible to participate, voters had to be born in Iraq or have an Iraqi father. They also had to have turned 18 by Dec. 31.

Am I the only one who thinks this is weird? Who decreed patrilinial citizenship?

The Standard

This guy is a real prize.

Security Nominee Gave Advice to the C.I.A. on Torture Laws
By DAVID JOHNSTON, NEIL A. LEWIS and DOUGLAS JEHL

This article is by David Johnston, Neil A. Lewis and Douglas Jehl.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 - Michael Chertoff, who has been picked by President Bush to be the homeland security secretary, advised the Central Intelligence Agency on the legality of coercive interrogation methods on terror suspects under the federal anti-torture statute, current and former administration officials said this week.

Depending on the circumstances, he told the intelligence agency, some coercive methods could be legal, but he advised against others, the officials said.

Mr. Chertoff's previously undisclosed involvement in evaluating how far interrogators could go took place in 2002-3 when he headed the Justice Department's criminal division. The advice came in the form of responses to agency inquiries asking whether C.I.A. employees risked being charged with crimes if particular interrogation techniques were used on specific detainees.

Asked about the interaction between the C.I.A. and Mr. Chertoff, now a federal appeals court judge in Newark, Erin Healy, a White House spokeswoman, said, "Judge Chertoff did not approve interrogation techniques as head of the criminal division."

Ms. Healy added, "We're not aware that anyone in the criminal division was involved in approving techniques because that responsibility would have belonged in the Office of Legal Counsel," another Justice Department unit.

One current and two former senior officials with firsthand knowledge of the interaction between the C.I.A. and the Justice Department said that while the criminal division did not explicitly approve any requests by the agency, it did discuss what conditions could protect agency personnel from prosecution.

Johnston and Co. dance around, but the article says that Chertoff didn't have any problems with the status quo ante. We'd better hope that the bad guys don't capture any of our troops. If rape and "waterboarding" is okay with us, I don't want to think about what will be dreamed up for our people.

Manifest Destiny

While you weren't looking:

It's Not All Blue Skies for Drilling Project
# Expansion of gas wells in Rocky Mountain states will degrade the air at several national parks.

By Miguel Bustillo, Times Staff Writer

GILLETTE, Wyo. — When he turned Mt. Rushmore into his granite canvas, sculptor Gutzon Borglum wrote that the faces of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln would remain visible, Lord willing, "until the wind and the rain alone shall wear them away."

Borglum's vision endures in the Black Hills of South Dakota about 130 miles from here, but for nearly a month every year, it may soon become harder to see the famous faces through the man-made haze generated by the addition of 50,000 gas wells in northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana.

It is just one of several ways in which the largest expansion of natural gas drilling approved by the federal government is expected to degrade air quality in the region that today has the clearest skies in the lower 48 states.

The federal Bureau of Land Management, under pressure from the White House to fast-track energy production, approved the drilling plan two years ago without incorporating any requirements to reduce the resulting air pollution.

Government scientists expect that the drilling expansion, combined with a planned increase in coal mining and oil drilling in the northern Great Plains, will nearly double smog-forming emissions and greatly increase particulate matter pollution in a thinly populated region that has produced less than 3% of the amount of unhealthful air found in Los Angeles.

The BLM moved forward with the project despite its own air quality analysis, which concluded that the pollution would cloud views at more than a dozen national parks and monuments, exceed federal air quality standards in several communities and cause acid rain to fall on mountain lakes, where it could harm fish and wildlife.

The Environmental Protection Agency, National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service expressed similar concerns to the BLM.

The agency was told to expect particle-laden dust clouds and smog-forming exhaust from what amounted to a new industrial zone of gas wells, compressor stations and service roads spanning more than 30 million acres.

"From our review, it appears this project may be inconsistent with the Clean Air Act," Forest Service officials wrote in a 2002 letter to the BLM. The letter stated that the Forest Service was particularly concerned about the effects of pollution and acid rain on several popular wilderness recreation areas.

EPA officials wrote in a similar 2002 letter to the land management agency: "Monitoring and mitigation are given short shrift." They added that the agency's environmental review did not "adequately link the modeled impacts, which are clearly above regulatory criteria, with what BLM proposes that it would do or it would recommend others do to mitigate impacts."

BLM officials acknowledged they were under orders from Washington to quickly approve the projects, which the Bush administration considered vital to meeting the nation's energy needs.

The U.S. Energy Department predicted last year that natural gas demand would grow 38% by 2025.

The Powder River Basin, the energy-rich region of Wyoming and Montana where the drilling plan was authorized, is believed to contain enough natural gas to power the country for a year.

The administration has also accelerated drilling in Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, raising concerns about environmental effects. But the increase in drilling activity has been greatest in Wyoming.

There, BLM officials said they were collaborating with state officials and industry groups to see that steps were taken to prevent serious problems.

"Even though we approved these wells, we were careful to disclose all impacts, and we have been working to mitigate them," said Richard Zander, assistant field manager for minerals and lands at the BLM field office in Buffalo, Wyo.

Wyoming officials, now flooded with permit applications to run heavy equipment at the gas fields, are planning a massive network of monitoring sensors to measure how much air pollution the fields are generating. Officials, however, concede that they are not sure how the state will pay for all of it. Gas companies are helping purchase some of the monitors.

"We definitely want to make sure we don't violate the Clean Air Act," said John Corra, director of the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality.

Critics say it will be difficult for government regulators to control the pollution after failing to address it upfront.

"It was one of the worst pieces of work I have seen in a long time, and it made me mad," said John Molenar, an air pollution consultant who has worked for the National Park Service. He was hired by a Wyoming environmental group, the Powder River Basin Resource Council, to review the gas project.

"Let's be honest about the consequences," Molenar said. "There will be an observable brown cloud at some times of the year that people will get mad about."

Now underway, the drilling boom, which will take two decades to complete, has already added more than 3,000 natural gas wells to the Powder River Basin, a picturesque landscape of meandering streams, rolling hills and expansive ranches where Crazy Horse once fought U.S. soldiers and Butch Cassidy hid from lawmen.

The air pollution from the gas project, when combined with existing emissions from cars, coal mines and power plants, is expected to diminish visibility at Mt. Rushmore National Memorial 26 days a year, according to the BLM's air quality analysis.

You didn't actually expect to USE our National Parks, did you? Silly, silly you. They're just unexploited resources for US energy companies. Didn't you know that?

The Iceman Cometh

Economic Growth Slowed in 4th Quarter

By Joel Havemann, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — U.S. economic growth, hobbled by a reduction in demand for American goods and services overseas, sagged to an annual rate of 3.1% after inflation in the final three months of last year, the government reported today.

It was the lowest growth rate since the first three months of 2003, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis said.

For all of 2004, the bureau found that the gross domestic product — total economic output — grew by 4.4%. That was its highest rate since the 4.5% registered in 1999, shortly before the most recent recession. And that in turn was last exceeded in the 1980s.

Economists attributed the tail-off in the final three months of 2004 to a 3.9% decline in exports, the sharpest drop in two years. Imports grew by 9.1% as the United States continued to suck in goods from around the world — particularly China and Japan.

"We're back in a situation where everybody but the U.S. is enjoying export-led growth," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist with Global Insight, a Massachusetts-based consulting firm.

If exports had merely held at their previous level, GDP would have grown a vigorous 4.8% in the last three months of last year, said Bill Dudley, chief domestic economist with Goldman Sachs.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com, a Pennsylvania consulting firm, said the decline in the dollar — about 15% against the euro in the last three years — would ultimately help the U.S. trade picture by making American goods and services cheaper on world markets.

But there is a lag, he said, while contracts at higher dollar values run their course. And China, the source of much of the U.S. trade deficit, pegs the value of its currency to the dollar.

"The dollar doesn't matter that much anyway," said Maury Harris, chief U.S. economist at the investment house UBS.

Countries, particularly in Asia, have been willing to invest in the U.S. many of the dollars they earn by selling goods and services here, he said.

"The Asian nations would prefer to lend us money than to buy our goods," Harris said. "We're still a pretty good credit risk."

Consumers continued to do their share of contributing to economic growth in the final three months of last year. Overall, sales in the U.S. grew 4.7%.

But so much of what they bought came from abroad that U.S. economic output grew by only 3.1%, short of the 3.5% that had been the consensus forecast of Wall Street economists.

So much for the Bush predictions of growth getting us out of his fiscal mess.

No More War

5 U.S. Soldiers and 5 Iraqis Killed in Attacks in Baghdad
By EDWARD WONG
and TERENCE NEILAN

Published: January 28, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 28 - Five American soldiers were killed in Baghdad in three separate incidents today, the military said, as pre-election violence also took the lives of four Iraqi policemen and a minibus driver.

American officials also reported that an Army OH-58 Kiowa helicopter crashed in southwest Baghdad today, but they had no immediate information on the cause or the fate of the crew, which typically consists of two members, although the aircraft can carry additional crew members or passengers.

"At this time, we have no evidence of hostile fire playing a role in the helicopter going down," said Col. Keith Walker, chief of staff of Task Force Baghdad and the First Cavalry Division.

In the other incidents, four soldiers were the victims of roadside bombs, one at 2 p.m. in the south of the city, and three at about 4:30 p.m. in western Baghdad. Another soldier died in small-arms fire in the northern part of the capital at about 2:15 p.m., the military said.

The Iraqi government, which has been seeking to reassure potential voters that it is addressing the security problems, announced today that two more close associates of the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have been arrested, news agencies said.

Right. Pin at all on the Bad Guy so that we can pretend that this is a cartoon war. That makes it simpler for fuzzy American heads.

Just Say "NO"

I join a growing consensusof blogs and bloggers who oppose the nomination of Alfredo Gonzales for Attorney General. Torturers ought to have no place in our government. The Bush administration, which has no shame, should be ashamed of this.

I've written my congresscritters. Have you?

Waiting it Out

Iraqis Get Ready for the Worst
People stock up on food and gasoline before an election-related national lockdown takes effect.
By Edmund Sanders
Times Staff Writer

January 28, 2005

BAGHDAD — As fast as butcher Shakir Salman can hang the skinned, headless sheep from hooks in his shop, customers scurry away with armloads of fresh meat.

Homemaker Manar Shumari is frantically stocking up on diapers for her 2-year-old. "I bought some yesterday, but I came again today, just to be sure," she said.

At Medical City in Baghdad, doctors are dragging mattresses into their offices and bunking in vacant nursing-home beds, preparing for the possibility of widespread bloodshed.

Amid excitement and fear over Sunday's election, Iraqis are in a mad rush to prepare for an unprecedented three-day national lockdown. With insurgents vowing to disrupt the balloting and kill voters, U.S. and Iraqi security forces have imposed a lengthy set of emergency security measures.

Starting Saturday, borders will be sealed and the airport will be shut down. Government offices and most companies will take a three-day holiday. Nightly curfews begin at 7 p.m. and last until 6 a.m.

In addition, cars will be banned from roads unless occupants have special election badges, except in cases of medical emergency.

Traffic in Baghdad, a city that loves cars as much as Los Angeles does, appeared Thursday to be down by about half. Road closures and police checkpoints made navigating the capital difficult. Many drivers said they wouldn't risk taking to the roads, noting that insurgents had threatened to attack anyone attempting to vote or assisting in the election.

"I'm staying home," said Ali Mohammed, 40, a government employee who was filling plastic jerrycans with black-market gas. "We don't know what's going to happen."

Though he won't be driving, but Mohammed said he needed the fuel to run a generator to compensate for chronic electricity failures.

Demand for gas, food and emergency supplies has spurred a price surge. Black-market prices for gasoline doubled from $1.30 a gallon last week to $2.70 a gallon Thursday. Potatoes that sold for 22 cents for a little more than two pounds on Monday sold for 55 cents Thursday.

Long lines snaked out of bakeries selling samoun, a popular bread. Grocery stores were selling out of water, eggs, canned food and rice.

Iraqis, who over the last two decades have grown accustomed to hunkering down, are preparing for the worst.

"Many people are scared," said Ahmed Abdullah, 36, a taxi driver who charged double his usual fare this week. "But so what? For one reason or another, we've been scared all our lives."

Similar stockpiling occurred shortly before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. But widespread road closures are rare in Iraq, the last one occurring in 1997 during a one-day national census.

Anticipating a rush this week, Salman, who has owned his Baghdad butcher shop since 1962, packed his freezer with lamb chops, steaks and whole chickens. For those customers seeking fresh meat over the weekend, there's a fluffy, white specimen tethered to a post outside his shop, ready for slaughter.

"I'm going to try to open, but I don't know if many people will be out shopping," Salman said.

Preparing Iraq's hospitals and healthcare facilities poses a unique challenge. If violence is stepped up during the election, the need for doctors and nurses will soar. But the logistics of transporting staff to work amid the security lockdown will be difficult, officials said.

Health Ministry officials ordered the nation's hospitals on emergency alert beginning Saturday and told them to prepare by stockpiling oxygen, blood, water, gasoline and cash.

"We're prepared for all eventualities," said Dr. Amer Mukh- tar, general director of Medical City, a giant complex of teaching hospitals and medical facilities in Baghdad. "God knows what will happen."

More than 500 elective surgeries were postponed to keep hospital beds free. Nearly 1,000 employees, from surgeons to blood bank workers, will camp out at the facility rather than commute each day. As medical personnel, they are exempted from the travel ban, but most prefer to sleep at work for the three-day lockdown.

This is the face of democracy and freedom. Don't we just love democracy and freedom? It's sorta like an icestorm. Just stock up and you'll be fine.

Unbalanced Risks

American consumers are weakest link
From Gary Duncan, Economics Editor, in Davos
Experts say that unrealistic spending is creating a dollar crisis
AMERICA needs to act to put its economy in order and rein in "self-indulgent consumers" before its vast government borrowing triggers a global economic crisis, experts claimed in Davos yesterday.

The day after the White House forecast a deficit of $427 billion this year, some of America's most prominent economists sounded warnings of a dollar crisis.

Fred Bergsten, the director of the Institute for International Economics in Washington, told delegates at the World Economic Forum that he feared that the beginning of such a crisis could come within days or weeks if President Bush's budget proposals did not convince financial markets that the deficit would start coming down over the next few years.

"The dollar would come down sharply, US inflation and interest rates would be pushed up sharply and the world would follow a much slower growth pattern. Trade would be a big casualty it would be poison for US trade policy," he said.

His warnings were echoed by Stephen Roach, the chief economist of Morgan Stanley, the Wall Street investment bank, who said that the US Federal Reserve was "in denial" over the threat posed by America's balance of payments and budget deficits. He pinned much of the blame for the economy's vulnerability on "self.indulgent" US consumers, who, he said, were the "weakest link" in a global economy that could be derailed at any time. "For me, something just doesn't add up. The American consumer is an accident waiting to happen."

Mr Roach said that American consumers were relying on a "bubble" in US property prices to sustain unrealistic spending and "turning their homes into a massive ATM machine".

Americans relying on borrowing against their homes are snapping up imports from Asia, made cheap by those countries' currency pegs to the dollar. To sustain the pegs, Asian nations are forced to keep buying dollars, artificially driving down US interest rates so Americans borrow even more.

"This is an insane way to run the world economy. You know that, we know that, but the Federal Reserve is in denial," Mr Roach said. He added that with US interest rates now climbing, a sharp retrenchment by American consumers could jeopardise economic recovery there and worldwide.

The comments came after a steep and steady slide in the dollar over the past three years that accelerated after Mr Bush's re-election in November - although the currency has steadied recently.

Financial markets and Wall Street economists see the deficits on the US Government's budget and balance of payments as unsustainable and as symptoms of fundamental imbalances in the world economy.

Amid doubts that the US can continue to draw in the $5 billion a day required to finance its current account deficit, now standing at 7 per cent of the national income, foreign exchanges have driven the dollar sharply downwards. Mr Bergsten said he believed "a very large correction" in the dollar's exchange rate, particularly against the currencies of China and other Asian nations, is needed to eliminate global imbalances.

I know from the stories you've all told me that most of you are in no position to be materialists. And that many of you, like me, are in straightened financial situations. I spent the day following up on some good financial advice I got from my brother a couple of weeks ago, and I'm in the middle of a cash out re-fi in order to get out of debt. The amount of equity I have in this place means that there is no good reason to be in consumer debt and debt to friends and family. The last job covered my expenses but nothing more. As my brother pointed out, a re-fi would also give me some breathing room to find the right job, rather than taking the first thing that comes along. Knowing that there is a financial crisis out there means that I'm leery of taking out an ARM, but my credit is so bad I can't qualify for a fixed. Those are the kinds of things that happen when you are unemployed or under employed for a long time. In my case, it's been nearly 5 years. The new mortgage will probably not be larger than the value of the place after the housing market crashes, pretty close to what I paid for it ten years ago, but it's still a risk. But one I can't afford not to take.

The Unserious Administration

A Deficit You Can't Refuse
# Fuggetaboutit: The White House isn't planning to get the budget in order.

JONATHAN CHAIT


Kay: It made me think of what you once told me — "In five years, the Corleone family will be completely legitimate." That was seven years ago.

Michael: I know — I'm trying, darling.

— The Godfather, Part II

I don't mean to sound cynical, but it's starting to look as though the Bush administration does not seriously intend to get the federal budget in order. At least that's the impression I got from White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's attempt this week to explain the unfortunate fact that the administration projects that the deficit will climb this year.

To grasp the full vacuity of the administration's rationalization, you need to consider it piece by piece. Here's how McClellan began his response to a reporter's question about the growing deficit: "And in terms of the deficit, the president has a deficit reduction plan. It's based on strong economic growth and spending restraint."

So the two elements of this plan are strong economic growth and spending restraint. Let's begin with the growth.

"Strong economic growth" means an expanding economy that produces large gains in tax revenues. The trouble is that the economy, as the administration has been reminding us for a long time, is already growing, yet tax revenues are not rising anywhere fast enough to meet the level of spending. Tax revenue accounted for 20.9% of the economy in 2000 and is projected to account for just 16.8% this year. A really hot business cycle can usually push tax revenues up a couple percentage points in a great year. Even if that were to happen in 2005, calling this a deficit reduction plan is like assuring your teenager that you have a plan to pay for her education, and it involves her growing 10 inches and winning a basketball scholarship. And no, dear, this growth plan has nothing to do with that new luxury yacht I just bought myself.

Phase 2 of the "plan" is spending restraint. President Bush is confining his spending restraint to domestic discretionary spending, which accounts for about $500 billion, less than a quarter of the budget. So, as I noted on this page a few weeks ago, programs like the National Science Foundation will suffer a budget freeze.

If he can get Congress to accept his spending limits — something he's tried and failed to do in every year of his presidency — we would chop a whopping $9 billion from the deficit. The deficit, let me remind you, will exceed $400 billion.

McClellan, perhaps trying to make the plan sound more extensive than it is, proceeded to repeat points one and two before concluding: "We've got a plan to cut the deficit in half over the next five years. And we are on track to meet that goal." On track, huh? Last year, the deficit was $412 billion. This year, it's expected to hit $427 billion. At this pace, we'll cut it in half by — hmm, let me pull out my calculator here — approximately never.

Nor is this the first of the broken promises. Bush first said he would cut the deficit by half in five years in July of 2003. Now, 18 months later, his press secretary is still promising to cut the deficit by half "over the next five years." It seems that at any given point in time, the date of this promised halving is always five years away.

I don't get the impression that this administration is actually interested in, you know, "governing." It's all about power and never about responsibility.

Myopia

Rumsfeld's Attendance at Security Conference Uncertain

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 28, 2005; Page A04

Will Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld skip a major security affairs conference in Germany next month or won't he?

Two weeks ago, he sent word to organizers of the annual event not to expect him, saying he would be traveling elsewhere in mid-February. The news, reported in Germany but not announced here, prompted complaints that Rumsfeld was snubbing Europe and speculation that his move was in reaction to a legal complaint filed against him in Germany.

By late yesterday, however, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Lawrence T. Di Rita, was waffling on the secretary's plans. He said Rumsfeld is weighing a number of "competing scheduling priorities," including other possible travel and preparation for congressional testimony on the defense budget. Di Rita left open the possibility Rumsfeld will attend the conference.

"I just don't know who will end up representing the Department of Defense," Di Rita said in a phone interview.

The event, known formally as the Munich Conference on Security Policy, marked its 40th anniversary last year. It draws hundreds of cabinet ministers, lawmakers and other prominent figures from many parts of Europe. Washington tends to be represented not only by the defense secretary but also by a large congressional delegation. This year, about a dozen U.S. lawmakers plan to attend, led by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.).

Word that Rumsfeld was not coming had surprised the conference's chief organizer, Horst Teltschik, who had assumed the decision was final.

"I'm really disappointed," he said earlier yesterday. By not attending, he added, Rumsfeld would be missing an important opportunity to explain the goals and initiatives of the Bush administration at the start of its second term.

"The defense secretary's speech has traditionally been a highlight of the conference," said Wolfgang Ischinger, Germany's ambassador to the United States. "I assume there'll be quite a bit of disappointment if this year he's not going to show up."

Bush administration officials have signaled that one of their second-term priorities will be to mend transatlantic ties that were badly frayed by disagreement over the war in Iraq. Between them, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Robert B. Zoellick, plan to visit every NATO ally this spring. President Bush expects to meet with NATO leaders in Brussels on Feb. 22, then stop in Germany.

There is a weird, US-centric quality to this article which simply doesn't comport with reality. Donald Rumsfeld is the second most hated man in Europe, after W himself. He will have no credibility with his European counterparts and there is no way on earth that those governments are going to be able to show their voters that they are giving Washington anything other than the cold shoulder, or they'll get pummelled at the polls.

Whatever inclination the Europeans might have had to "mend fences" has pretty much disappeared with the confirmation of Gonzales as AG. The Europeans are outraged that such a person could assume the highest law enforcement position in the land.

Worm_Bagle.AZ spreading rapidly in the wild

I don't usually post "worm warnings" to message boards. But this puppy is a special case. Really.

I strongly suspect my ISP uses some sort of filtering software, as it is most unusual for malware to land in my Inbox. But I received two probables in the last 12 hours.

Previous variants of Bagle have been roaring successes .. for the sick sniggering little sociopaths who wrote them. Not for anybody else.

If you have not updated your A/V signatures in the last 12 hours, you should do so NOW.

Here is the Trend Micro page concerning this infector. Here is the Symantec page.

Be wary of any new email with the following "Subject" lines:

Delivery service mail
Delivery by mail
Registration is accepted
Is delivered mail
You are made active

Be wary of any email with the following message bodies:

Thanks for use of our software.
Before use read the help

Be wary of any email with the following attachment names:

guupd02
Jol03
siupd02
upd02
viupd02
wsd01
zupd02

DO NOT OPEN THE ATTACHMENT. If you take that precaution, you should be OK.

If you do get hit, there is a removal tool here.

Best of luck, and heads to the storm.

Bird Flu Update

Forbes gets it.

The Next Big Killer
Robert Langreth and Tomas Kellner, 02.07.05

When a giant wave kills 200,000, the world is stunned and wonders what could have been done. But it is less galvanized to deal with a global catastrophe that could be much worse.

It is likely to kill many millions of people, sicken a quarter of the world's population and send the global economy into a tailspin. There is little we can do to stop this disaster from happening, and it could already be imminent.

The threat, obscured by the all-too-with-us aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami, is a global influenza pandemic, the rapid spread of a deadly new strain of the influenza virus to which no one in the world is immune. Such a virulent strain unpredictably leaps from farm animals to humans every few decades, with devastating consequences. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the worst on record, felled 50 million people; it was particularly effective at targeting adults in the prime of life. Milder pandemics occurred in 1957 and 1968. Thanks to modern jet travel and densely packed Asian countries where millions live in close proximity to farm animals, the threat of a new pandemic is greater than ever.

"The influenza tsunami is coming. It is hard to say that the probability of its occurring is anything other than 100%," says Martin Meltzer, health economist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. The only real questions, he says, are how soon and how bad. A potential pandemic may already be brewing. The so-called bird flu, identified by virologists as H5N1 (a reference to the viral surface proteins hemagglutinin and neuraminidase; there are 15 types of ‘H' and 9 subtypes of ‘N' proteins), first emerged in Hong Kong in 1997 and has spread among poultry populations in Vietnam, Thailand and elsewhere in Asia. So far it has infected 47 people who had come in contact with sick animals, and killed 34 of them--a chilling 72% mortality rate. (By comparison, the SARS virus killed 10% of the 8,000 people it hit.) Unlike ordinary flu strains, which mostly vanquish elderly or other vulnerable populations through secondary bacterial infections or by exacerbating preexisting conditions, the bird flu appears to have a more direct killing effect on cells in the lungs and other organs; many of the fatalities were among previously healthy young people.

It may just be a matter of time before a new strain combines the high lethality of avian flu with garden-variety influenza's ability to spread through coughing and sneezing. (Recently a strain in Holland infected a thousand people, killing one.) Meltzer says it is virtually certain there will eventually be another lethal pandemic. What is the probability that H5N1 is going to be it? That's hard to judge. Still, says University of Minnesota infectious-disease epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, "this looks like the first chapter in the new flu pandemic. Even with moderate transmission and fatality rates, this could do in less than a year what HIV took 30 years to do."

Since no one would be immune, all 6.4 billion people on the planet would need a shot. But only 300 million flu shot doses are produced each year, a capacity that could stretch to 500 million or so doses in the case of a single-strain pandemic. In any case the shots may come too late: A special vaccine would have to be made, a months-long process that involves incubating influenza virus in millions of chicken eggs. "It will go around the globe, and nothing will stop it," says Klaus Stöhr, head of the World Health Organization's Global Influenza Program. "At best we can slow down the spread to give us a little more time to produce more vaccines."

The U.S. vaccine supply is particularly vulnerable, now down to a single main flu shot manufacturer, Sanofi-Aventis, after factory snafus this fall contaminated the entire supply at Chiron Corp., the other big producer. After giving lip service to the influenza threat for years, the U.S. government is finally getting serious. Federal spending on flu research, surveillance and vaccine procurement zoomed to $283 million this year from $39 million in 2001. But 20 state health departments still don't have pandemic response plans, and half don't have an online reporting system compatible with theCDC's national database, says Trust for America's Health, an advocacy group. Assuming that a pandemic hits once every 30 years, economist Meltzer calculates that $700 million to $2 billion in annual spending for vaccine development and response is justified.

GOVERNMENTS ACT AGAINST LOOMING DISASTER

The WHO warned last week that the bird flu virus was now endemic in Asia and it appeared to be evolving in ways that increasingly favoured the start of a deadly human outbreak.

Experts still believe most nations would be helpless if the H5N1 virus becomes as easily transmittable as human flu. That could happen if the bug got into an animal, most probably a pig, and mingled with the type of influenza virus that affects people.

UPDATE: Vietnam deploys bird flu riot police, another dies
28 Jan 2005 18:09:38 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Adds WHO, paragraphs 10-12, China's Wen, paragraphs 16-18)

HANOI, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Vietnam has deployed riot police at bird flu checkpoints around sprawling Ho Chi Minh City, officials said on Friday, as the killer virus claimed another victim, raising the country's recent death toll to 10.

Following an order from the city's People's Committee, the armed riot officers are backing up traffic police and market monitors manning 24-hour checkpoints to stop infected or uncertified birds entering the southern city, officials said.

As Vietnam's third wave of the killer H5N1 virus spreads unchecked, city authorities have started destroying any chickens and ducks whose origins cannot be pinned down, a policy that has raised the rare threat of civil unrest.
....
The Saigon Giai Phong daily said travel agents in Vietnam's southern commercial hub had also been told not to take tourists to areas with a high risk of the H5N1 virus, which has killed at least 42 people since first erupting in Asia at the end of 2003.

Expect civil unrest all over the place if this bug breaks out.

Hard Truths

Seymour Hersh in Democracy Now:

For me, it's just another story, but out of this comes a core of -- you know, we all deal in “macro” in Washington. On the macro, we're hopeless. We're nowhere. The press is nowhere. The congress is nowhere. The military is nowhere. Every four-star General I know is saying, “Who is going to tell them we have no clothes?” Nobody is going to do it. Everybody is afraid to tell Rumsfeld anything. That's just the way it is. It's a system built on fear. It's not lack of integrity, it's more profound than that. Because there is individual integrity. It's a system that's completely been taken over -- by cultists. Anyway, what's going to happen, I think, as the casualties mount and these stories get around, and the mothers see the cost and the fathers see the cost, as the kids come home. And the wounded ones come back, and there's wards that you will never hear about. That's wards -- you know about the terrible catastrophic injuries, but you don't know about the vegetables. There's ward after ward of vegetables because the brain injuries are so enormous. As you maybe read last week, there was a new study in one of the medical journals that the number of survivors are greater with catastrophic injuries because of their better medical treatment and the better armor they have. So you get more extreme injuries to extremities. We're going to learn more and I think you're going to see, it's going to -- it's -- I'm trying to be optimistic. We're going to see a bottom swelling from inside the ranks. You're beginning to see it. What happened with the soldiers asking those questions, you may see more of that. I'm not suggesting we're going to have mutinies, but I'm going to suggest you're going to see more dissatisfaction being expressed. Maybe that will do it. Another salvation may be the economy. It's going to go very bad, folks. You know, if you have not sold your stocks and bought property in Italy, you better do it quick. And the third thing is Europe -- Europe is not going to tolerate us much longer. The rage there is enormous. I'm talking about our old-fashioned allies. We could see something there, collective action against us. Certainly, nobody -- it's going to be an awful lot of dancing on our graves as the dollar goes bad and everybody stops buying our bonds, our credit -- our -- we're spending $2 billion a day to float the debt, and one of these days, the Japanese and the Russians, everybody is going to start buying oil in Euros instead of dollars. We're going to see enormous panic here. But he could get through that. That will be another year, and the damage he’s going to do between then and now is enormous. We’re going to have some very bad months ahead.

"He" is W, the "cult" is the neocons.

Hersh is one of the few who can tie all the pieces together, the war, the economy, everything. The only piece he is missing is avian influenza. Even without that, this is going to be a very, very difficult year.

Damage

Returning veterans paint grim picture of war's toll

January 27, 2005

BY CHERYL L. REED Staff Reporter

Soldiers recently returned from Iraq gave an unfiltered and unflattering assessment of the war's human toll as they detailed their war experiences to a crowd of Oakton Community College students and faculty Wednesday in Des Plaines.

One officer lost more than 38 pounds in the Iraqi desert when his unit ran low on food and water. Another was sent to the front lines without body armor. They witnessed soldiers blown to bits and mourned the loss of others who killed themselves when they returned home -- often excluded from the government's official body count.

And they've been frustrated with buddies who have had to wait months for medical services or for their claims to be decided by the Veterans Affairs Department.

'People are unaware'

"There's a tremendous human cost of this war, and America isn't prepared for it," said Paul Rieckhoff, a former Army infantry platoon leader from New York and founder of Operation Truth, a national soldier organization that is touring college campuses to present an alternative view of the war.

Rieckhoff criticized the military for not releasing the entire number of those killed or injured in Iraq, a figure he said is far greater than the 1,416 listed as killed and 10,622 listed as wounded by the Defense Department.

"It takes guys like us to embarrass [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld before things get changed," he said. "The military is being run into the ground, and the American people are unaware of what's really going on."

The group showed a documentary in which former soldiers from Iraq -- many of them amputees -- were angry about how the government treated them once they returned, complaining they were met with a "nightmare of paperwork" to get medical and disability benefits.

"Once you've served your purpose," one young soldier told the camera, "you're no longer of use to the U.S. government."

The soldiers' group is advocating legislation that would provide the VA with more funding and stop a proposed budget cut, give better counseling and treatment for the estimated thousands of troops returning with psychological problems and train and equip National Guard and reservists on par with their active duty counterparts. It also wants the military to end its stop-loss policy, which prevents many soldiers from leaving the military when their term ends.

While Americans are plastering their vehicles with "support the troops" ribbons, here is what is really going on, and it is hurting recruitment and retention very badly.

I am not a pacifist, but it is a principled moral stand I admire. I believe that we do need a competant military and we had one until relatively recently.

Profit Motive

Secrets and Epidemics

The avian flu is known to have killed 32 humans last year — hardly enough to trigger global concern, it seems. But viruses have a habit of mutating in ever more harmful ways, and there are signs that avian flu could be on the verge of turning into a much greater threat, capable of killing millions of people around the world.

That was the conclusion of top World Health Organization officials in the wake of a study published in Thursday's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. The only thing stopping avian flu from raging through human populations, epidemiologists believe, is that it hasn't mutated in ways that allow efficient human-to-human transmission. The new study, however, suggests that this may be changing.

The first strategy that was tried — stopping the virus in its tracks — has failed. Despite the slaughter of more than 100 million birds, the virus is thriving in poultry farms throughout Asia.

Earlier this week, the WHO was forced to halt a meeting of its 32-member executive board because delegates couldn't agree on whether to let poor countries ignore drug patents, should massive infections of avian influenza break out in humans. The opposition to granting such exceptions, led by French and U.S. officials, is shortsighted. These nations have already agreed to grant patent exceptions to poor countries for drugs to treat AIDS and HIV, which can fell people over months or years; it's illogical for them to forbid such exceptions for drugs to treat avian influenza, which can be fatal in a few days.

But the most effective strategy for tackling avian influenza shouldn't cost any money at all, unless you count political currency. The leaders of wealthy nations, particularly President Bush, must push Asian nations to cooperate rather than resist efforts to investigate and quell the disease.

What's needed is a commitment from China's leaders — who lied for months last year about the number of their citizens infected with another virus, SARS — that they will not conceal what they know about any human avian flu outbreaks. There are signs that China may be encouraging dangerously irresponsible policies. In recent months, poultry farmers have been buying vaccines on the black market that keep their chickens alive without killing avian influenza, thus doing nothing to stop its spread. Thailand recently banned the use of such vaccines, but China has been promoting it.

Without information on outbreaks, epidemiologists can't track the progress of the disease and organizations such as the WHO can't develop effective ways to fight it. When it comes to potential scourges like avian flu, secrecy can be deadly.

The LAT still doesn't get the seriousness of the situation, but at least Big Media are starting to pay attention.

I caught this brouhaha at WHO earlier this week at CIDRAP. We're facing a disease with a frightening mortality rate and the public health authorities are arguing about patent rights? My God.

Cold Wind

Oh, pogge? Something tells me you are going to have to say hello to a bunch of my countrymen very soon.

The Return of the Draft

With the army desperate for recruits, should college students be packing their bags for Canada?

By TIM DICKINSON

Uncle Sam wants you. He needs you. He'll bribe you to sign up. He'll strong-arm you to re-enlist. And if that's not enough, he's got a plan to draft you.

In the three decades since the Vietnam War, the "all-volunteer Army" has become a bedrock principle of the American military. "It's a magnificent force," Vice President Dick Cheney declared during the election campaign last fall, "because those serving are ones who signed up to serve." But with the Army and Marines perilously overextended by the war in Iraq, that volunteer foundation is starting to crack. The "weekend warriors" of the Army Reserve and the National Guard now make up almost half the fighting force on the front lines, and young officers in the Reserve are retiring in droves. The Pentagon, which can barely attract enough recruits to maintain current troop levels, has involuntarily extended the enlistments of as many as 100,000 soldiers. Desperate for troops, the Army has lowered its standards to let in twenty-five percent more high school dropouts, and the Marines are now offering as much as $30,000 to anyone who re-enlists. To understand the scope of the crisis, consider this: The United States is pouring nearly as much money into incentives for new recruits -- almost $300 million -- as it is into international tsunami relief.

"The Army's maxed out here," says retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, who served as Air Force chief of staff under the first President Bush. "The Defense Department and the president seem to be still operating off the rosy scenario that this will be over soon, that this pain is temporary and therefore we'll just grit our teeth, hunker down and get out on the other side of this. That's a bad assumption." The Bush administration has sworn up and down that it will never reinstate a draft. During the campaign last year, the president dismissed the idea as nothing more than "rumors on the Internets" and declared, "We're not going to have a draft -- period." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in an Op-Ed blaming "conspiracy mongers" for "attempting to scare and mislead young Americans," insisted that "the idea of reinstating the draft has never been debated, endorsed, discussed, theorized, pondered or even whispered by anyone in the Bush administration."

That assertion is demonstrably false. According to an internal Selective Service memo made public under the Freedom of Information Act, the agency's acting director met with two of Rumsfeld's undersecretaries in February 2003 precisely to debate, discuss and ponder a return to the draft. The memo duly notes the administration's aversion to a draft but adds, "Defense manpower officials concede there are critical shortages of military personnel with certain special skills, such as medical personnel, linguists, computer network engineers, etc." The potentially prohibitive cost of "attracting and retaining such personnel for military service," the memo adds, has led "some officials to conclude that, while a conventional draft may never be needed, a draft of men and women possessing these critical skills may be warranted in a future crisis." This new draft, it suggests, could be invoked to meet the needs of both the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security.

The memo then proposes, in detail, that the Selective Service be "re-engineered" to cover all Americans -- "men and (for the first time) women" -- ages eighteen to thirty-four. In addition to name, date of birth and Social Security number, young adults would have to provide the agency with details of their specialized skills on an ongoing basis until they passed out of draft jeopardy at age thirty-five. Testifying before Congress two weeks after the meeting, acting director of Selective Service Lewis Brodsky acknowledged that "consultations with senior Defense manpower officials" have spurred the agency to shift its preparations away from a full-scale, Vietnam-style draft of untrained men "to a draft of smaller numbers of critical-skills personnel."

Richard Flahavan, spokesman for Selective Service, tells Rolling Stone that preparing for a skills-based draft is "in fact what we have been doing." For starters, the agency has updated a plan to draft nurses and doctors. But that's not all. "Our thinking was that if we could run a health-care draft in the future," Flahavan says, "then with some very slight tinkering we could change that skill to plumbers or linguists or electrical engineers or whatever the military was short." In other words, if Uncle Sam decides he needs people with your skills, Selective Service has the means to draft you -- and quick.

But experts on military manpower say the focus on drafting personnel with special skills misses the larger point. The Army needs more soldiers, not just more doctors and linguists. "What you've got now is a real shortage of grunts -- guys who can actually carry bayonets," says McPeak. A wholesale draft may be necessary, he adds, "to deal with the situation we've got ourselves into. We've got to have a bigger Army."

Michael O'Hanlon, a military-manpower scholar at the Brookings Institute, believes a return to a full-blown draft will become "unavoidable" if the United States is forced into another war. "Let's say North Korea strikes a deal with Al Qaeda to sell them a nuclear weapon or something," he says. "I frankly don't see how you could fight two wars at the same time with the all-volunteer approach." If a second Korean War should break out, the United States has reportedly committed to deploying a force of nearly 700,000 to defend South Korea -- almost half of America's entire military.

O'Hanlon, as always, is being very conservative. If we are going to continue the Madness in Mesopotamia, the Army, active, Reserve and National Guard, will be demonstrably broken by the time of the next troop rotation. This is planned for this summer. A draft instituted right now isn't going to help that.

If we are going to keep 120,000 troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future, however, a draft becomes inevitable.

Gunpoint Democracy

In Violence-Prone Mosul, Voters Will Need a Shield of Snipers
By CHRISTINE HAUSER and THOM SHANKER

Published: January 28, 2005

Once considered a model city of the occupation, Mosul has descended into a hellish sectarian stew, 65 percent Sunni Arab and 30 percent Kurdish, with a sprinkling of Turkmens, Assyrians and other ethnic groups. Making matters worse, in November thousands of police and security officers abandoned their posts under an insurgent assault that coincided with the American attack on Falluja.

Since then, scores of civilians have died in attacks. Kurds, government officials and Iraqi security officers have been massacred.

Thousands of American troops poured into the region after the uprising in November, anchoring security, arresting suspects, uncovering caches of weapons and carrying out raids in some of the most extensive military operations in the country. Hundreds of Kurdish fighters have been sent here to enforce security.

But much damage had been done, and election officials were left scrambling to catch up. Mosul's 700 election workers, threatened by insurgents, walked off the job. A warehouse full of ballot papers was attacked and burned in December.

"It has not gone to plan," said Maj. Anthony Cruz, the liaison officer between the elections commission in Mosul and the American military. "They had to reconstitute a large portion of staff."

To recruit more election workers, Mr. Kazar promised prospects a secure place to stay, food provisions and a bonus of $500 - a major sum in Iraq right now. The drive apparently paid off to some extent.

On Thursday, Mr. Kazar was busy leading a group of new recruits in the basics of balloting. At a guarded building in Mosul, he demonstrated how to mark voters' fingers so they could not vote twice, how to use the voting booths and how to check identities.

One election worker said he joined the commission because he was convinced it was the only way to get the country out from under military occupation.

"We need an election to get a real government going and to get real police and security forces," said the man, a 25-year-old Arab from Mosul, who declined to be named because, he said, he would be "slaughtered" if he were identified.

American officials have been trying to convince Iraqi voters that they can vote safely. "American and Iraqi operations conducted over the last several weeks have set the conditions for the vast majority of Iraqis to vote safely," Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American commander in Iraq, said in a brief interview here. But even so, he warned, "there will be violence."

Talk about democracy at the end of a gun. How real is an election by gun?

Duck and Cover

Hoon and Rumsfeld agree Iraq exit strategy

Patrick Wintour and Ewen MacAskill
Friday January 28, 2005
The Guardian

The US and Britain have privately agreed an exit strategy from Iraq based on doubling the number of local police trainees and setting up Iraqi units that would act as a halfway house between the police and the army.

The agreement was reached on Monday between the US secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and his British counterpart, Geoff Hoon.

It was based on recommendations from retired US general Gary Luck, sent to Iraq by the Pentagon last month to look at the failings of Iraq's security force.

The more aggressive police force is designed gradually to replace the 150,000 coalition troops and will form the centrepiece of plans for Britain and the US to quit Iraq.

Although no deadline has been set for withdrawal - partly, British sources say, because it may encourage the insurgents - Britain has made a phased pull-out its top priority.

"Everything the defence secretary is working towards now is an exit strategy, but without a public timetable," said a British military source.

Spanish and Italian forces could be asked to help train the Iraqis, a British defence source said. Thousands of troops from the multinational force would back up the Iraqi police which, at present, has a reputation for desertion in the face of the insurgency.

Although the US and Britain would like to pull out as soon as Iraq is stable, Gen Luck said it could be years before the Iraqi police was ready.

The Pentagon this week said it expected to maintain 150,000 troops in Iraq for at least the next two years.

Britain said yesterday it would send 220 more soldiers to Iraq to help fill a gap left by the Netherlands which is pulling out in March.

If the build-up of reliable Iraqi security forces could be speeded up, Britain can see various staging posts for a phased withdrawal. Dates include August 15, when a constitution is to be agreed by the assembly. By 15 December, there is due to be a new national election.

Charles Kennedy demanded a clear statement yesterday on the future status of British troops. He called on Tony Blair to set out "a proper exit strategy, including the phased withdrawal of British troops, as the security situation allows."

This is blowing smoke. There is no schedule, this is make work to give Hoon some political cover.

Scumbags

As Texas judge, Gonzales heard donors' cases
Practice legal, but still faces criticism

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | January 27, 2005

WASHINGTON -- When White House counsel Alberto Gonzales was a Texas Supreme Court justice running to stay in office in 2000, he took thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from companies that had business before him and he did not recuse himself from voting on their cases.

The practice is legal in Texas, and Gonzales was not the only judge to benefit from it. But his record in 2000 -- when he raised $539,000 for the Republican primary, outraising his opponent by a 1,047-to-1 ratio -- drew special criticism from an Austin-based group that tracks the influence of money on government.

Gonzales's nomination to be US attorney general was approved yesterday by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which voted 10-8 on party lines to send his confirmation to the Senate floor. Criticism of his nomination has focused on his role in formulating the Bush administration's policies on torture and interrogations.

But to government watchdog groups, his record of declining to recuse himself from cases involving campaign contributors is also worthy of scrutiny.

''It raises questions about the integrity of his decision-making process," said Chellie Pingree, president of Common Cause, a public corruption watchdog group. ''When you have people come before the bench from whom you have accepted campaign contributions, and you don't recuse yourself, that raises questions."

Gonzales had been appointed to the bench in 1999 by then-Governor George W. Bush, but had to run in 2000 to keep his seat. That year, he accepted $2,000 from an insurance company after the court heard arguments -- but before it issued a decision -- as to how much the company should pay a man injured in a car accident. In a similar case, he voted in favor of another insurance company whose law firm gave his campaign $2,500 just before the court heard arguments.

Both cases involved whether insurance companies had to pay interest to plaintiffs whose final awards were delayed because the case went to court. The watchdog group said the decisions were ''a costly slap in the face to Texas consumers."

The group sarcastically called the donations ''prejudgment premiums" collected by Gonzales and another justice who voted in favor of the insurance industry.

While the group singled out those two donations as particularly egregious, it also criticized Gonzales for taking tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from law firms with clients before the Texas Supreme Court and business interests who wanted to clamp down on large personal injury awards.

After Gonzales's confirmation hearing two weeks ago was dominated by questions about the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies in the war on terrorism, Senator Russell Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, sent a written follow-up question to Gonzales about his judicial campaign finance record.

Feingold asked him whether the reports were accurate and asked, ''[Did he think] it is ethical or appropriate for a judge to accept campaign donations from parties appearing before him?"

Gonzales sent back three sentences in reply: ''In Texas, the voters elect the justices of the Supreme Court. My contributors, as well as those of every other justice, are a matter of public record. I am confident that during my service as a justice on the Supreme Court of Texas, I complied with all legal and ethical requirements regarding acceptance of campaign contributions."

The White House press office declined to make Gonzales available for further comment yesterday. But he was more forthcoming in a response attributed to him by Texans for Public Justice in their 2000 report: ''In the whole scheme of things, $2,000 isn't going to have any kind of influence on me."

Most.Unethical,Administration.Ever.

Solidarity Forever

The WaPo's Dan Froomkin rarely reports news, that's not his beat at the Post. However, his column today has an interview from American Journalism Review with Clinton's press chief Mike McCurry, who makes a point often made on this site.

The Sad Lot of the Press Corps

Lori Robertson has a big piece in the American Journalism Review on the White House and its tight control over the press corps.

"The lack of solidarity in the press corps is another thing that amazes McCurry. If a reporter is thrown off the vice president's plane, he asks, why doesn't the entire press corps say, fine, then none of us travels with you. 'You don't ever see any kind of collective action like that.' "

News from Davos

China has lost faith in stability of U.S. dollar, top Chinese economist says

Edith Lederer
Canadian Press

January 26, 2005

At a standing-room only session focusing on the world's fastest-growing economy, Fan Gang, director of the National Economic Research Institute at the China Reform Foundation, said the issue for China isn't whether to devalue the yuan but "to limit it from the U.S. dollar."

But he stressed that the Chinese government is under no pressure to revalue its currency.

China's exchange rate policies restrict the value of the yuan to a narrow band around 8.28 yuan, pegged to $1. Critics argue that the yuan is undervalued, making China's exports cheaper overseas and giving its manufacturers an unfair advantage. Beijing has been under pressure from its trading partners, especially the United States, to relax controls on its currency.

"The U.S. dollar is no longer - in our opinion is no longer - (seen) as a stable currency, and is devaluating all the time, and that's putting troubles all the time," Fan said, speaking in English.

"So the real issue is how to change the regime from a U.S. dollar pegging ... to a more manageable ... reference ... say Euros, yen, dollars - those kind of more diversified systems," he said.

"If you do this, in the beginning you have some kind of initial shock," Fan said. "You have to deal with some devaluation pressures."

The dollar hit a new low in December against the euro and has been falling against other major currencies on concerns about the ever-growing U.S. trade and budget deficits.

Sinking Dollar Dominates Davos Debate
By MARK LANDLER

Published: January 27, 2005

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 26 - Two things were as clear as the Alpine air on the opening day of the World Economic Forum on Wednesday: The relentlessly sinking dollar is Topic A, and anyone hoping for an answer to when it will stop dropping is likely to come away disappointed.

Economists, politicians and business executives voiced deep unease about the imbalances in the global financial system, which are reflected in the dollar's steep fall against the euro and other currencies.

But most expressed skepticism that the Bush administration would reduce the trade and budget deficits, which have fed those imbalances. The White House has said that it does not view these issues as a major problem because foreigners still view the American economy as an attractive investment.

Some at the forum said they doubted that China, which is financing much of the American debt, would bow to pressure to allow its currency to rise against the dollar this year.

"The U.S. current-account deficit is a problem for the whole world," said Jacob A. Frenkel, a former governor of the Bank of Israel. But, he said, "I don't see the budget deficit being taken seriously."

The Bush administration, which dispatched Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to past Davos meetings to defend the Iraq war and other foreign policy actions, has not sent a similarly prominent economic policy maker to this gathering. That absence has lent the proceedings an imbalanced tone.

"In fairness, it's a transition period in Washington," said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, who supplied the American voice on a panel about American leadership. He added, however, "The administration doesn't really have anyone they trust enough to send here."

Mr. Frank, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, said that he worried that the United States was not paying enough attention to the risks of its growing indebtedness. The repercussions of a weak dollar, he said, had barely registered with the White House.

Other critics were blunter.

"There's nobody home on economic policy in America right now," said Stephen S. Roach, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley. The twin burdens of household and public debt in the United States, he said, are unsustainable. Describing American consumers as "an accident waiting to happen," he asked, "When does the music stop?"

With the dollar already trading at $1.30 to the euro - near the level of economic unacceptability for Europe - Mr. Roach said the United States could not rely on currency markets to right the imbalance between it and the Asian countries that finance American deficits by buying Treasury bills.

The answer, he said, lies with the Federal Reserve, which he said would have to raise rates aggressively to curb the spending binge. Whether it could do that without triggering a recession is an open question.

Few here held out hope for international coordination of the kind that stabilized the dollar in the 1980's.

"The Bush administration doesn't listen to people," said Laura D. Tyson, who served as an economic adviser to President Bill Clinton. "There's no hope of changing U.S. fiscal policy."

Hot Air and Hot Lead

Dahr Jamail's Here Comes "The Freedom"

Let me describe the scene on the ground here in “liberated” Iraq.

“Now I’m afraid mortars will hit my home if the polling station is attacked,” he adds. He’ll be moving across town to stay at a relative’s house, which is not near one of the dreaded polling stations.

The facts on the ground seem to have very little to do with Bushian rhetoric.

Communicator in Chief Keeps the Focus on Iraq Positive
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: January 27, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 - President Bush's opening statement at his news conference on Wednesday was striking for what it left out: any mention of the 31 Americans who died overnight in the crash of a Marine helicopter in Iraq, the largest number of American deaths in a single incident since the war began.

Mr. Bush instead focused on his long-term goal of "ending tyranny in our world," and then cast the Iraqi election coming Sunday as part of a march of freedom around the globe. He said that if he had told the reporters in the room a few years before that the Iraqi people would be voting, "you would look at me like some of you still look at me, with a kind of blank expression."

The president's words were part of an aggressive White House communications strategy this week and next to frame the risky Iraqi election - a critical test of his assertion that the country is on the path to stability - in the best possible light. The goal, a Bush adviser said, was not only to lower expectations but to avoid any definition of success.

Guns 'n' Butter

I gotta start spending more time with the regional papers....

Forcing democracy on Iraq is getting really expensive

Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Dick Feagler
Plain Dealer Columnist

By now, we know the following things: Iraq had nothing to do with the destruction of the World Trade Center. Iraq had no plans to invade us. Iraq had no stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. After 9/11, we could have let Iraq go its own way and not have been damaged.

But now we're in a war. The meter is running, and soon 1,500 of our kids will have been killed in this war. And that doesn't count the thousands who have come back without limbs. For them, the war will never be over.

America basically shrugs at this. All the blood-letting under America's flag has not yet fully captured America's attention.

And neither will that $80 billion bill. Because it's borrowed money and Americans are used to credit cards and borrowing money. They think, somehow, this is tomorrow's debt and not today's problem.

I would love to see a draft come back for this war. But that ain't going to happen. Failing that, I'd love to see a draft lottery - a universal lottery - that cuts across all class lines.

We like to say we have no classes in America. We like to say it, but it certainly isn't true. The kids who are fighting this war are not the same kids who are out after their MBA degrees. Anybody who denies that is a liar. And too many people on the top are liars. Or, if that's too strong, delusionaries.

These delusionaries are talking about an election in Iraq this weekend. At gunpoint. Why do they think they can buy democracy on credit?

They're nuts.

But they can afford to be nuts because they rule over a complacent society that rarely calls them to question.

If the billions weren't on the Visa bill, maybe America would pay attention. If the cost of this war, which most Americans blandly oppose, were added to the property tax or the sales tax, maybe we'd pay more attention to what we're doing.

That's why it's off budget.

Except it's not off budget for the kids who come home in caskets.

It's not off budget for the kids in Walter Reed, learning to walk with metal legs.

This war is not off budget for any of us. Think what we could do with these billions. How many schools built? Which diseases hurried to a cure?

I figure the best rules to attract democracy are the same that apply to a singles bar. It's all a question of allure. You'd better not force it, and if you have to buy it you're buying emptiness. On your card, brother.

Neocon Out

Key Player In Postwar Strategy in Iraq to Quit

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 27, 2005; Page A03

A principal architect of the Defense Department's postwar strategy in Iraq announced yesterday that he will leave his post this summer.

Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, said he is leaving for personal reasons, citing the desire to spend more time with his four children. "For the last four years, they haven't seen me a lot," Feith said yesterday.

Feith is a longtime Washington lawyer and part of a group of neoconservative foreign policy experts known for strong support of Israel and who had long-held aspirations of unseating Saddam Hussein.

Supporters have praised Feith and the group, which includes former Reagan defense aide Richard N. Perle, for their willingness to take risks to confront autocracy in the Middle East and for their hard-line position against giving up Israeli-held land to the Palestinians.

Detractors have criticized Feith for being unrealistic about the cost and outcome of invading Iraq and have asserted that he played a critical, behind-the-scenes role in exaggerating the prewar threat from Hussein through a secretive office he set up, the Office of Special Plans.

Retired Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, once commander of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, called him "the stupidest guy on the face of the Earth" in his recent book. Feith and Franks tangled often, including over a proposal to train 5,000 Iraqi soldiers to be interpreters and guides during the war.

I think the facts can pass their judgement on Doug Feith, who will probably go on to a thinktank job at AEI or a board position with Carlyle. He is totemic of the idea that smarts do not equal wisdom.

Is an indictment pending? I don't know.

Peace and Freedom v. 5.0

Prof. Cole remarks, "You know, if all you have to boast about is that you are better than Saddam Hussein, it isn't actually a good sign. Can you imagine what would have happened to the Republican Party if its reply to Kerry's criticisms of last summer had been, "Well, the American Republican Party is a damn sight more progressive than Hitler was.""

Iraqi Insurgency Proves Tough to Crack
# U.S. officials no longer believe this weekend's election will finish off the rebellion, whose disparate factions unite in hating the Americans.

By Patrick J. McDonnell, Times Staff Writer

BAGHDAD — Four days before the landmark Iraqi national election, U.S. officials and their allies are bracing for fresh insurgent attacks with far less of the optimism that marked previous milestones.

The capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 was greeted as a likely death blow for the guerrillas, then regarded as an incipient array of ill-organized holdovers from the ousted dictator's Baath Party. When sovereignty was returned to Iraq six months later, the insurgents were seen as a more substantial threat, but it was widely anticipated that their strength would wither under an Iraqi government.

Today, after more than 18 months of often-fierce confrontations, tens of thousands of hard-core fighters are said to be operating in and around Baghdad and the Sunni Muslim heartland of central Iraq. The insurgents have plenty of firepower and mobility, employ strategic military thinking and operate openly in some areas, defying Iraqi government control.

On Tuesday, insurgents assassinated an Iraqi judge, killed at least five members of Iraqi security forces and made public a videotape of an American hostage begging for his life at gunpoint.

Recently the insurgents have carried out about 50 attacks daily, including a spate of killings and the bombing of a water main that disrupted the supply for hundreds of thousands of Baghdad residents. After a round of killings in Ramadi, the capital of Al Anbar province in the Sunni heartland, word came Tuesday that the 1,000-member police force had abandoned its posts, the latest flop of the U.S.-sponsored security services.

Regardless of the turnout for Sunday's election, U.S. officials are no longer predicting the swift vanquishing of the insurgents, who have stymied the world's most potent military machine with bombings, assassinations, abductions and infrastructure attacks.

"I think during election day they're going to start to attack early, create as big of a media event as they can, to try and intimidate people," a senior U.S. commander said Tuesday.

Other assessments are even more bleak.

"I think it is unlikely that these elections will do much to bring violence down; let's be honest about it," said one Western official here, who, like several others interviewed, declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. "I think the elections are a huge step for the credibility of the government, the legitimacy of the government, and will contribute to a solution over the medium and long term. But there's not going to be a short-term answer in March or April…. Ending the violence is going to take a long time."

The shift in attitude reflects a view that the insurgents have successfully adapted to changed circumstances.

The water main bombing, for example, appeared to be part of a well-planned campaign of sabotage that has left much of the nation's infrastructure in tatters. Rebels have mounted hundreds of attacks on oil, gas and electricity lines, and most major highways are hijack-prone shooting galleries. The international airport is now little used; two commercial flights returned to Jordan this week because of intense battles on the ground near the airfield.

Blogkeeping

We'll be off-line for a bit this afternoon as we negotiate the change from dial up to cable broadband. During the intermission, the email address will be
[email protected], and I'll default the Bump software to send "comments" there. Once I get a permanent address it will be front page and put up on the right sidebar. Today is going to be a little messy.

Do-Over

Criminals the lot of us

The invasion of Iraq was a crime of gigantic proportions, for which politicians, the media and the public share responsibility
Scott Ritter
Thursday January 27, 2005

Guardian

The White House's acknowledgement last month that the United States has formally ended its search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq brought to a close the most calamitous international deception of modern times.

This decision was taken a month after a contentious presidential election in which the issue of WMD and the war in Iraq played a central role. In the lead-up to the invasion, and throughout its aftermath, President Bush was unwavering in his conviction that Iraq had WMD, and that this posed a threat to the US and the world. The failure to find WMD should have been his Achilles heel, but the Democratic contender, John Kerry, floundered, changing his position on WMD and Iraq many times.

Ironically, it was Kerry who forced the Bush administration to acknowledge that it was WMD that solely justified any military action against Iraq. Before the US Senate in 2002, secretary of state Colin Powell responded to a question posed by Kerry about what would happen if Iraq allowed UN weapons inspectors to return and they found the country had in fact disarmed.

"If Iraq was disarmed as a result of an inspection regime that gave us and the security council confidence that it had been disarmed, I think it unlikely that we would find a casus belli."

When one looks at the situation in Iraq today, the only way that it would be possible to justify the current state of affairs - a once secular society now the centre of a global anti-American Islamist jihad, tens of thousands of civilians killed, an unending war that costs almost £3.2bn a month, and the basic principles of democracy mocked through an election process that has generated extensive violence - is if the invasion of Iraq was for a cause worthy of the price.

The threat to international peace and security represented by Iraqi WMD seemed to be such a cause. We now know there were no WMD, and thus no justification for the war. And yet there are no repercussions.

The culpability for the war can be traced to those same Senate hearings in 2002, when Colin Powell said:"We can have debates about the size of the stockpile ... but no one can doubt two things. One, they [Iraq] are in violation of these resolutions ... And second, they have not lost the intent to develop these weapons of mass destruction."

Politicians, the mainstream media and the public alike accepted this line of argument, without debate, thus setting the stage for an illegal war.

UN weapons inspections were never given a chance. Ever since the Clinton administration ordered them out of Iraq in 1998, the US has denigrated the efficacy of the inspection process. This was a policy begun by Clinton, but perfected by Bush in the build-up to war. In October 2002, a month after Saddam Hussein agreed to the unfettered return of weapons inspectors, the US defence department postulated the existence of secret production facilities, protected by a "concealment mechanism" designed to defeat inspectors. Thus, even if they returned, a finding of no WMD was meaningless.

Inspectors did return, and they found nothing. Iraq submitted a complete declaration of its WMD holdings, which was dismissed as lies by the Bush administration. Everyone seemed to accept this rejection of fact. "Intelligence information" wasassumed to be infallible. And yet it was all just hype.

There was never any serious effort undertaken by the Bush administration to find Iraqi WMD. Prior to the invasion, the US military re-designated an artillery brigade as an "exploitation task force" designed to search for WMD as the coalition advanced into Iraq.

It did little more than serve as a vehicle for its embedded reporter, Judith Miller of the New York Times, to recycle fabricated information provided by Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, creating dramatic headlines that had no substance. Once Iraq was occupied, Miller was sent home, and the taskforce disbanded.

Well, Scott, not all of us bought Miller's line nor endorsed the war. Some of us had seen the "swinging dick" strategy in human behavior enough before to notice when we were seeing it again.

I don't ask to be excused, just to be noticed, that when the rest of my co-workers were anticipating sarin attacks in the DC Metro system, I was buying fare cards. That when pre-emptive war was being pardoned among my co-workers, I was quoting Stanley Hauerwas. Now that we are mired in the sands of Mesopotamia, I don't know how they feel.

Terra, Terra, Terra

Bush Describes 'Ending Tyranny' As Ideal, Not Shift

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 27, 2005; Page A01

President Bush yesterday characterized his Inauguration Day goal of "ending tyranny in our world" as a long-term ideal rather than a new policy redefining U.S. relations with repressive governments, as he ratcheted back expectations of a more muscular approach to spreading freedom abroad.

While saying he had "firmly planted the flag of liberty" in Iraq, Bush offered no tangible plans for how he would plant it in other countries, suggesting instead that the stirring words of last week's inaugural address were meant as a statement of principles recapitulating his first-term practices.

"My inaugural address reflected the policies of the last four years," Bush told reporters at the first news conference of his second term. Asked if the speech that termed advancing democracy "the calling of our time" reflected a policy shift, he said: "No. As I said, it reflects the policy of the past, but it sets a bold new goal for the future. And I believe this country is best when it heads toward an ideal world."

The president's hastily called appearance in the White House briefing room came on the deadliest day yet for U.S. troops in the war in Iraq and just four days before Iraqis are scheduled to go to the polls to elect a new National Assembly. With Iraq serving as a volatile test case for his vision of embedding democracy in historically hostile parts of the world, Bush urged Iraqis to go to the polls Sunday and "defy these terrorists" who are "afraid of a free society."

Looking ahead to his State of the Union address next Wednesday, Bush said he will present specific ideas for restructuring Social Security and then barnstorm through four or five states to sell his plan, but he also signaled openness to negotiating with key congressional Republicans who have been skeptical. Bush repeated his vow to cut the federal deficit in half in five years despite heavy new spending on Iraq and said he has ordered Cabinet departments not to pay media commentators to promote administration policies.

But it was Iraq and the president's vision to promote democracy that dominated the 47-minute session. Bush appeared in a confident, relaxed mood, notably more upbeat on Iraq than he seemed at his news conference in December, when he acknowledged that anti-American insurgents were "having an effect" and complained that U.S.-trained Iraqi troops had sometimes "left the battlefield" rather than fight. By contrast, yesterday he praised "some really fine units" among the Iraqis and called the election "a grand moment in Iraqi history."

I watched it and think it represented a low point in the presidency of a low rent president.

There was a time, not that long ago, when presidents used the pronoun "we" when referring to their administration. This was not the royal "we" but rather the democratic "we," the recognition that governing is a business that requires the work of many. Bush, however, prefers the royal "I", he is the Sun King, and uniquely available, when he isn't in Crawford, for the "hard work" of governance. This presser was emblematic of everything which is wrong with Bushco.

GS-0

Civil Service System on Way Out at DHS
Department Will Deviate From Federal Personnel Rules; Others May Follow Suit

By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 27, 2005; Page A01

The Bush administration unveiled a new personnel system for the Department of Homeland Security yesterday that will dramatically change the way workers are paid, promoted, deployed and disciplined -- and soon the White House will ask Congress to grant all federal agencies similar authority to rewrite civil service rules governing their employees.

The new system will replace the half-century-old General Schedule, with its familiar 15 pay grades and raises based on time in a job, and install a system that more directly bases pay on occupation and annual performance evaluations, officials said. The new system has taken two years to develop and will require at least four more to implement, they said.

Wednesday's Question:
The Senate is scheduled this week to confirm several of President Bush's Cabinet nominees. Which of the following positions was NOT within former president Under the new plan, employees will be grouped into eight to 12 clusters based on occupation. Salary ranges will be based, in part, on geographic location and annual market surveys by a new compensation committee of what similar employees earn in the private sector and other government entities. Within each occupational cluster, workers will be assigned to one of four salary ranges, or "pay bands," based on their skill level and experience.

A raise or promotion -- moving up in a pay range or rising to the next one -- will depend on receiving a satisfactory performance rating from a supervisor, said officials with homeland security and the Office of Personnel Management.

"We really have created a system that rewards performance, not longevity," OPM Director Kay Coles James said in a briefing for reporters. "It can truly serve as a model for the rest of the federal government."

The Civil Service system was erected to move political abuses out of of the personnel system. Do you really think that this crew is going to keep politics out of the hiring and firing process?

Home: Where the Heart is

The Best Coverage Money Can Buy

Published: January 27, 2005

Mr. Bush was plainly irritated by having to field questions about administration officials who tapped taxpayers to finance spin-for-money deals. The most prominent sellout was Armstrong Williams, the conservative television commentator who took $240,000 to do administration bidding on behalf of the No Child Left Behind Act while making a show of tough-minded candor.

The latest is the syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher, who did not disclose a $21,500 government writing contract for her promotion of Bush policy on strengthening marriage. Last year, there was the propaganda video on behalf of the Medicare drug program offered to budget-pressed TV stations. Full disclosure at signoff might have said, "Reporting live and in the tank!"

Loss of credibility works both ways. The exposed spinners deservedly suffer shame. But the administration's believability comes into question when officials like Rod Paige, the outgoing education secretary, defend buying faked coverage.

Family Dynamics

Pick your poison: which one gets us first? A dirty bomb in Washington, bird flu or a global recession? I'm betting on the second, CIDRAP doesn't think there is a decent defensive strategy in here anywhere, but Bob Kuttner is looking at global economic collapse today and I hardly blame him. It's all in the timing, Bob. You are damned right, unless the virus hits first. Combine the two and I don't want to think about it.

Oh yes, it can happen here

By Robert Kuttner | January 26, 2005

''How did you go bankrupt?"
''Two Ways. Gradually, and then suddenly."
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

COUNTRIES GO broke gradually, by borrowing so much money that creditors lose confidence in their ability to pay the debt back. Then, they go broke suddenly as creditors stop lending.

This has happened to more than a dozen Third World nations, who had the additional misfortune of having to borrow in dollars. As their own currency lost the confidence of world markets, they lost value against the dollar. This only increased their real debt burden. The optimists say, ''It can't happen here."

First, we're the people who print dollars. So if the dollar is losing value, it just means the money that we owe the rest of the world is getting cheaper. Lucky us.

Second, we enjoy a codependency with our creditors. For instance, China, which keeps lending us money to finance our deficits, may be accumulating dollar credits that are losing their real worth. But China needs us to keep absorbing their products, so China will go right on lending.

And third, the United States remains the anchor of the world economy. So even though other nations may not like America's immense trade and budget deficits, nobody is going to risk pushing the world into depression by crashing the dollar.

That, as I say, is the optimistic view. Well, dream on.

Yesterday, the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, possibly the last intellectually honest government agency in George Bush's Washington, reported that our fiscal situation is even worse than expected.

According to the CBO's latest ''Budget and Economic Outlook," the projected deficit for 2005 will be about $400 billion. The CBO declares, politely but unmistakably, that it doesn't buy the Bush administration's budgetary gimmickry of trying to keep anticipated military outlays out of the official budget.

''The absence of further appropriations for activities in Iraq and Afghanistan," CBO states, ''masks a further deterioration in budget projections over the [next] ten years."

Specifically, the deficit for the next decade is $504 billion worse than anticipated in CBO's previous estimate last September.

The agency goes on to warn that other challenges not currently itemized in official administration projections, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, will only increase future deficits. And, of course, if the Bush administration succeeds either in making permanent his major tax reductions (most of which sunset after 10 years), or in adding $2 trillion of borrowing to privatize Social Security, the fiscal situation would go from merely disastrous to catastrophic.

But back to our story, ''It Can't Happen Here." America's deteriorating fiscal situation, unfortunately, is not lost either on world money markets or on the Federal Reserve. Although no world leader would willfully plunge the world into depression, that's not how markets work. Markets are purely self-interested.

Lately, markets, with good reason, have been betting against the dollar. As the US trade deficit approaches a staggering 7 percent, it's not clear how much longer foreign investors will keep investing in dollars and dollar-securities, such as corporate stocks and government bonds.

As for the Chinese, Clyde Prestowitz of the Economic Strategy Institute, formerly a senior trade negotiator in the Reagan administration, offers the following scenario: In a future crisis involving the tense China-Taiwan relationship, the Chinese ambassador suggests to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that maybe the United States would like to move its warships 500 miles away from Taiwan. Rice demurs. The next day, the Bank of China sells a few --just a very few to get our attention -- US Treasury securities. Money markets reel.

Countries go broke the same way the rest of us go broke. And we're doing it right now in a way that is going to take our equity markets down and out. And I don't notice anyone waiting around to bail us out.

Welcome to Bushism 2.0. Making the world safer for terrorism and economic collapse since 2000. Is it any wonder that the rest of the world looks on with horror and alarm? We're like that drunken poor relation who embarrasses everybody at weddings and funerals. You have to go to the event, but you're going to get cornered by the sot at some point.

I imagine that world leaders just love getting lectured by W the same way the press corps does. Not.

Frustration Watch

This comes from a very surprising source, paleocon Paul Craig Roberts, (fixed) and it is right on:

The Iraqi War is serving as a great catharsis for multiple conservative frustrations: job loss, drugs, crime, homosexuals, pornography, female promiscuity, abortion, restrictions on prayer in public places, Darwinism and attacks on religion. Liberals are the cause. Liberals are against America. Anyone against the war is against America and is a liberal. "You are with us or against us."

Falling living standards and inability to impose our will on the Middle East will result in great frustrations that will diminish our country.

I think that about sums it up.

Failed Policies

Rehearsal for Democracy

American officials have set the bar about as low as it can go for expectations about Sunday's election in Iraq. Is it a success if only 20% of the voters turn out? If the outcome is decided more by voters outside the country than in it? Nobody wants to say, and for good reason. As low as the bar is, the election could still prove to be a disappointing farce.

Days before the balloting, most Iraqis have no idea where their polling places will be — unless they are voting outside the country. In Baghdad, Mosul, Ramadi and other cities, officials have kept the location of polls secret as long as possible for fear that insurgents will destroy the sites.

Many Iraqis have refused to announce their candidacies for one of the 275 seats in the interim national assembly or for offices in the provinces. Suicide car bombers and terrorist executioners have tried to scare voters away from the polls, especially in cities with a majority of Sunni Arabs.

Yet with sufficient luck, the balloting could mark the start of independent rule for the country and an eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops. Without luck or good follow-up, the election could fuel a civil war.

The expectation is for parties led by Shiites, who account for about 60% of the population, to win most of the seats in the assembly. Kurds, who are Sunni but not Arab, make up about 20% of the population and may take about that percentage of the seats. Arab Sunnis, who account for about 20% of the population but were favored by fellow Sunni Saddam Hussein, are boycotting. That will increase the pressure on the winners to determine how to bring the Sunnis into the political process after the election.

One possibility would be increasing the number of assembly seats and earmarking some of them for Sunnis. Whatever happens, Sunni involvement in the assembly's drafting of a new constitution is to be encouraged. Voters will get the chance to pick a full-term assembly later this year, and also will decide whether to approve the constitution. Sunnis have majorities in three provinces, and the transitional law passed last spring allows rejection of the constitution if two-thirds majorities in three of the country's 18 provinces turn thumbs down. That gives Sunnis leverage, which they should use to push for a constitution that provides for protection of minority communities.

The election is on Sunday, the Iraqis don't know who's running or where to vote (if they dare leave their homes) and we're still talking about what the process should be? LAT, this is purest bullshit. The process for the election was set by the interim constitution, like it or not.

Re-arranging the deck chair on the Titanic is what this is.

Not the Whole Story

The US is behaving as if every Sunni is a terrorist'

For centuries they have comprised the ruling class, but since the fall of Saddam everything has changed for Iraq's Sunni Arabs. This weekend's elections are likely only to reinforce their disaffection, reports Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
Wednesday January 26, 2005

Guardian

'Two weeks ago, Adnan al-Janabi, the then minister of state in the Iraqi interim government of premier Ayad Allawi, and a tribal leader of one of Iraq's largest predominantly Sunni tribes, was arrested, handcuffed and insulted by US soldiers manning a checkpoint leading into the Green Zone where he worked. Only when a senior bodyguard of the prime minister intervened was he released. That same day he resigned from government.

"You know, and other brother ministers know," he wrote, "how many insults we suffer on the hands of the occupation forces, and the Iraqi people suffer from far more. We have been patient telling ourselves maybe we can do something ourselves to reduce the effect of the occupation. But arresting one of the ministers in such a humiliating way can mean only one thing: that the sovereignty the security council talked about means nothing to the occupation force."

Janabi, apart from being one of Iraq's most revered tribal sheikhs, is also a highly educated man who found himself in an awkward position after the war.

He leads one of the largest tribes in what is known now as the triangle of death south of Baghdad. He is also a western-educated former Opec official who knows how to talk to the Americans as well as the UN. Finally, when he puts on his traditional Arab dress, he becomes the charming sheikh who can reason with everyone including Ayatollah Sistani. For almost two years now he has been trying very hard to bridge the ever growing gap between his community and the Americans; as fruitless a task as one might imagine.

Janabi is one of the few Sunni leaders still involved in this weekend's elections. Most others have announced their decision to boycott them. Nevertheless, when one junior American officer was fed up with this bald, thin man who insisted on knowing why he couldn't get to his office - despite his US-approved ministerial ID card - he was arrested on the spot.

Janabi's ordeal has been experienced by most of his community, a community trying to come to terms with the realities of the post-Saddam era; a change not helped by being the target of a near-daily American campaign of intimidation.

What happened to him might be a coincidence, but what is happening to his Sunni community has proven to be far more complicated than that. In Iraq - as is the case in most of the Muslim world - the Sunnis were always the natural-born leaders of the community. In Iraq's case this meant that they tended to look with a mixture of anxiety and scorn at the poor Shia in the south and the Kurds in the north; these fears and prejudices were exploited by those who came to control Iraq, from the Ottomans to Saddam via the British.
....
Having a tribal name that associated you with a Sunni-dominated area or tribe was for centuries a guarantee of access to the government and a good job, but these same names now land you in American custody if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A widespread loathing of the Americans combined with a fear of Shia revenge is likely to lead to a very low turnout among Sunnis this weekend. For most, a Shia government is inevitable - and so, in turn, is the likelihood of further disturbance. A senior moderate Sunni official who is running in next week's elections was asked what would happen if the Shia won a landslide victory. He replied: "We will all join the armed resistance."

There is something important missing from this story: US soldiers and marines can't tell a Sunni from a Shia on sight. They are going to treat every "rag head" like shit, they don't know or understand the political, historical or religious differences between them, nor do they care. This particular Sunni found a sympathetic reporter and got a megaphone.

Neocon Dreams

Wake Up! Bush Is Serious

by Paul Craig Roberts

If Bush were in control or had a brain, he would have shut Cheney up and fired all the neocons who produced the Iraqi disaster. Instead, despite the Iraqi mess, the Bush administration is publicly threatening to attack Iran, a country that has committed no terrorist or aggressive act toward the U.S. The Pentagon has been ordered to prepare plans. Apparently, the U.S. has already inserted special forces into Iran to gather intelligence.

The neoconservatives are Jacobins. The neocons are the greatest threat America has ever faced, and they have the reins of power. Americans need to wake up to this fact and stop indulging their macho "kick their Muslim butts" fantasies and their "end times" Rapture fantasies.

The Bush administration is not establishing any democracies. It is starting a war that will last a generation. That is the neocon plan. They have put their intentions in writing just as Hitler did. It is no protection that their plan is detached from reality. Robespierre was detached from reality, and that did not stop him. So were Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. People with power in their hands who are detached from reality are the most dangerous people of all. The delusional quality of their rantings disarms people from taking them seriously: "Oh, they couldn't mean that." But they do.

I watched some think tank panel program on C-Span this morning which featured Weekly Standard editor Bill Krystol, spewing the party line on all this wonderful peace and freedom we're going to spread to Iran. The fact that we don't have the horses doesn't seem to bother any of these fantasists.

New Crew

What-If A-Bomb Postulator Ascends

By Al Kamen
Wednesday, January 26, 2005; Page A19

The diplo crowd had raised its hopes of late that Condoleezza Rice would return to her realist roots once confirmed as secretary of state and then restrain ideological activists at the Pentagon.

The diplos watched approvingly as Rice tapped a number of career officers and former secretary of state James A. Baker III hands to senior-most jobs: Robert B. Zoellick as No. 2 and career officer R. Nicholas Burns as No. 3, along with highly regarded career officers to key posts at the undersecretary and assistant secretary levels.

But word last week, according to the San Jose Mercury News, was that Rice had tapped Stanford University professor Stephen D. Krasner, a close pal and mentor from university days, to the key job of director of policy planning.

This is raising some eyebrows.

From its iconic first director, George F. Kennan, the policy planning chief, gatekeeper for all paper that heads to the secretary's desk, usually is a veteran Washington hand: Think of Winston Lord for Henry A. Kissinger, Peter W. Rodman and Richard H. Solomon for George P. Shultz, Dennis B. Ross for Baker, Morton H. Halperin for Madeleine K. Albright, or Richard N. Haass for Colin L. Powell.

In contrast, Krasner spent about a year here in the early days of this administration, first at policy planning and then working for Rice on the National Security Council staff.

In addition, though he has long been respected as a premier thinker firmly in the realist camp, his latest views on preventive war seem to be more in sync with the Pentagon's, judging from his article in the most recent issue of Foreign Policy. In that piece, Krasner speculates on what would happen if terrorists set off nuclear explosions here and in New Delhi, Berlin and Los Angeles.

"Full-scale preventive wars would be accepted in principle," he says, "and the major powers would no longer" bother trying to get United Nations approval. "A consortium of major powers would assume executive authority and declare the international legal sovereignty of the occupied territory null and void.

"A state's right to control the exploitation of its natural resources (most notably oil) within its territory will be an added casualty," Krasner writes, adding that there is a "growing tension" between states that cannot manage their internal affairs and "the handful of states that possess the means and wherewithal to set matters right."

Meanwhile, U.N. membership "would be contingent upon a state's ability to effectively control it's own territory," he predicts. Presumably he is exempting America's inability to control immigration across its borders. Well, no confirmation required for this gig.

While not a full-on PNACer, Krasner doesn't seem to be all that reality based but appears to have a rich fantasy life. This doesn't bode well for that trip to Europe coming up next week.

New News II

Bumpers,

Courtesy of the assistence of a loyal reader, I'm moving to cable broadband tomorrow. This means my email will change, but I won't know until the service tech arrives what the new address will be. When I get the new address, I'll post it here and put it in the sidebar at the right.

I am literally unable to conceive of what this change in speed will mean for me.

To Tell the Truth

Winning Cases, Losing Voters
By PAUL STARR

Published: January 26, 2005

Princeton, N.J.

To be sure, Democrats were right to challenge segregation and racism, support the revolution in women's roles in society, to protect rights to abortion and to back the civil rights of gays. But a party can make only so many enemies before it loses the ability to do anything for the people who depend on it. For decades, many liberals thought they could ignore the elementary demand of politics - winning elections - because they could go to court to achieve these goals on constitutional grounds. The great thing about legal victories like Roe v. Wade is that you don't have to compromise with your opponents, or even win over majority opinion. But that is also the trouble. An unreconciled losing side and unconvinced public may eventually change the judges.

And now we have reached that point. The Republicans, with their party in control of both elected branches - and looking to create a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that will stand for a generation - see the opportunity to overthrow policies and constitutional precedents reaching back to the New Deal.

That prospect ought to concentrate the liberal mind. Social Security, progressive taxation, affordable health care, the constitutional basis for environmental and labor regulation, separation of church and state - these issues and more hang in the balance.

Under these circumstances, liberal Democrats ought to ask themselves a big question: are they better off as the dominant force in an ideologically pure minority party, or as one of several influences in an ideologically varied party that can win at the polls? The latter, it seems clear, is the better choice.

Rebuilding a national political majority will mean distinguishing between positions that contribute to a majority and those that detract from it. As last year's disastrous crusade for gay marriage illustrated, Democrats cannot allow their constituencies to draw them into political terrain that can't be defended at election time. Dissatisfied with compromise legislation on civil unions and partner benefits, gay organizations thought they could get from judges, beginning with those on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, what the electorate was not yet ready to give. The result: bans on same-sex marriage passing in 11 states and an energized conservative voting base.

Public support for abortion rights is far greater than for gay marriage, but compromise may be equally imperative - especially if a reshaped Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade by finding that there is no constitutional right to abortion and throws the issue back to the states. Some savvy Democrats are already thinking along these lines, as Hillary Clinton showed this week when she urged liberals to find "common ground" with those who have misgivings about abortion.

And if a new Supreme Court overturns affirmative-action laws, Democrats will need to pursue equality in ways that avoid treating whites and blacks differently. Some liberals have long been calling for an emphasis on "race neutral" economic policies to recover support among working-class and middle-income white voters. Legal and political necessity may now drive all Democrats in that direction.

Republicans are leaving themselves open to this kind of strategy. Their party is far more ideologically driven and more beholden to the Christian right than it was even during the Ronald Reagan era. This is the source of the party's energy, but also its vulnerability. The Democrats' opportunity lies in becoming a broader, more open and flexible coalition that can occupy the center.

In the long run, Democrats will benefit from their strength among younger voters and the growing Hispanic population. But the last thing the Democrats need is a revived interest group or identity politics. As the response to Senator Barack Obama's convention speech showed, the party's own members are looking for an expansive statement of American character and national purpose.

Secure in their own lives at home, Americans can be a great force for good in the world. That is the liberalism this country once heard from Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy - and it is the only form of liberalism that will give the Democratic Party back its majority.

No, no and no. What cost the election for the Democrats was the Wurlitzer and the fact that the entire MSM is taking its marching orders directly from the office of Karl Rove. Remeber what Greg Palast told us?

In June 2002, Dan Rather looked old, defeated, making a confession he dare not speak on American TV about the deadly censorship -- and self-censorship -- which had seized US newsrooms. After September 11, news on the US tube was bound and gagged. Any reporter who stepped out of line, he said, would be professionally lynched as un-American.

"Bush Family Fortunes," the one-hour documentary taken from Greg Palast's BBC investigative reports, including the story of George Bush and Texas Air Guard, can be viewed, in part, at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm

If the g-damn Washington press corps would all hang together and refuse to accept Bush bull**shit, they couldn't be picked off individually like this. They should be boycotting little Scotty's bearcrap "briefings" and Bush "press conferences." Starve them of attention. Make 'em beg for it.

Up comes the Bush presser this morning. This is a presidency in deep trouble. Will the sharks smell the blood in the water?

Mass Casualty Situation

Marine copter crash kills 31

January 26, 2005

BY SAMEER N. YACOUB ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAGHDAD, Iraq-- A U.S. Marine helicopter transporting troops crashed Wednesday in the desert of western Iraq, killing 31 people, American military officials said. It was the deadliest crash of a U.S. military helicopter in Iraq.

A Pentagon source said the helicopter was a CH-53 Sea Stallion, which is normally configured to carry 37 passengers, but can take up to 55. There was no immediate word on how many people were on board or what caused the crash.

The military officials did not specify the nationalities of those on board or say how many were soldiers.

It was the biggest loss of life in a helicopter crash in Iraq-- and could be the deadliest single incident for American forces since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

The helicopter went down about 1:20 a.m. near the town of Rutbah, about 220 miles west of Baghdad, while conducting security operations, the military said in a statement. The aircraft was transporting personnel from the 1st Marine Division.

A search and rescue team has reached the site and an investigation into what caused the crash is underway, the military said.

"We can confirm casualties, but not what type or numbers yet," a U.S. spokesman, Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, said.

Previously, the deadliest incident involving U.S. troops was a Nov. 15, 2003, crash of two Black Hawk helicopters that collided while trying to avoid ground fire in Mosul, killing 17 U.S. soldiers and wounding five.

Earlier that month, a Chinook transport helicopter was shot down by shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile near Fallujah, killing 16 American soldiers and wounding 26.

The U.S. military has lost at least 33 helicopters since the start of the war, including at least 20 brought down by hostile fire, according to a study by the Brookings Institution.

I wonder if this will get the war back on the national radar screen.

Staying Away in Droves

Voter Registration of Iraqi Expatriates Falls Short

By Paul Richter, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Efforts to register Iraqi expatriates to vote in Sunday's Iraq elections have fallen far short of expectations, drawing in fewer than 10% of the eligible voters in the United States and fewer than 25% worldwide, according to officials.

The program was launched two months ago by the exile-dominated Iraqi Election Commission to empower Iraqis driven abroad by Saddam Hussein, and in hopes of beefing up vote totals for the moderate parties that are led by exiles. But as registration closed today, it was clear that the $92-million effort had been hampered by a late start, the long distances between registration sites, and many expatriates' mixed feelings about the election.

A tally that includes all but the last day of registration shows that about 24,000 of an estimated 240,000 eligible Iraqi Americans have signed up over the nine-day registration period. About 256,000 out of 1.2 million eligible Iraqi expatriates worldwide have signed up. The figures suggested that expatriate voters will be less influential than some analysts have forecast in the election, in which 13 million Iraqis are eligible to vote.

"It was a long distance to travel and the elections had lost credibility with some people," said Sam Kubba, an Iraqi American businessman in northern Virginia who had lobbied hard for the out of country voting program.

A senior U.S. official said the low turnout meant expatriate voters would not be a major factor in the election, adding that the relatively low turnout in the United States was "not all that surprising." "People have a way of settling in in the United States and forgetting about the old country," he said.

More Iraqi expatriates made it to the registration sites in other countries.

Iran, a refuge for Shi'iah Iraqis for decades, led in turnout, with 53,145, or 65%, of 81,000 Iraqis registered. Election officials said the Shi'iah government of Iran was highly cooperative in registering those expatriates, who are expected to vote heavily for Shi'iah slates.

Sweden was No. 2, with more than 29,000, or 51%, of its 57,000 eligible voters.

In Jordan, where many Sunni Iraqis now live, only about 14,000 of 180,000, or about 8%, of expatriates registered. In Syria, the figure was 14,000 of 250,000, or 6%.

If most people think the election is a sham, and it appears that the ex-pats do, it hardly makes sense to tie yourself into knots to go through this tortured registration process.

Street Justice

Insurgents Vowing to Kill Iraqis Who Brave the Polls on Sunday
By DEXTER FILKINS

Published: January 26, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 25 - The black sedan made its way down Madaris Street, the young men inside tossing leaflets out the window.

"This is a final warning to all of those who plan to participate in the election," the leaflets said. "We vow to wash the streets of Baghdad with the voters' blood."

Thus was the war over Sunday's nationwide elections crystallized in a single incident on Tuesday in Mashtal, an ethnically mixed neighborhood on the eastern edge of Baghdad, where many Iraqis say they would like to vote, and where a small, determined group of people are doing everything they can to stop them.

The leaflets, like many turning up on sidewalks and doorsteps across the capital, were chilling in their detail: they warned Iraqis to stay at least 500 yards away from voting booths, for each would be the potential target of a rocket, mortar shell or car bomb. The leaflet suggested that Iraqis stay away from their windows, too, in case of blasts.

"To those of you who think you can vote and then run away," the leaflet warned, "we will shadow you and catch you, and we will cut off your heads and the heads of your children."

The effect of such intimidation across the country will not be known until Sunday. Estimates vary, but Iraqi officials say they will be pleased if the nationwide turnout reaches 50 percent of the 14 million eligible voters. In some areas, like the Sunni-dominant cities of Ramadi and Falluja, even a meager turnout would be welcomed.

In Madaris Street, the men in the black sedan got a hostile reception: Iraqi police officers spotted the car and opened fire, killing two of the men, residents said. The rest got away, after killing three officers.

Guerrilla groups have vowed to step up attacks to disrupt the voting.

I note that Filkins finds neither interest nor irony in the fact that Iraqi police can offer summary justice on the street to the propagandists in the face of so-called "democratic" elections.

The US media have fallen to a truly lowly state.

Bringing Freedom

Sunnis Weigh the Risks of Running
One Tribal Leader Defies Threats, but Another Sits It Out

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, January 26, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- Mishaan Jubouri does not dare set foot in his home district in Mosul to campaign for a seat in Iraq's National Assembly. His posters are torn down -- if anyone was emboldened to put them up in the first place. Stores do not sell the newspaper he runs, and some post large signs on their windows saying so. Even in Baghdad, where Jubouri lives now, his wife and family are afraid to leave their home, which is guarded by 54 armed security men.

Still, Jubouri, a Sunni Muslim and Mosul's first mayor after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government, defies those trying to stop the Iraqi elections. He has to run, he says, "to give the people some hope."

In another northern city, Kirkuk, things are almost as bad. Ethnic strife looms over the coming vote, politicians have been kidnapped, mortar fire punctuates campaign debate, candidates are scared and their staff members are hunkered down in their homes. A Sunni leader there, Abdul Rahman Asi, took stock of the situation and chose to do the opposite of what Jubouri is doing.

"Under normal circumstances, I would be a candidate. But the people are too afraid to come. There will be no voters. I will only lose," Asi said. "It is dangerous, and my reputation will go down."

The two men -- both leaders of large Sunni Arab tribes -- represent the dilemma for Iraq's once-dominant branch of Islam. The Sunnis are the targets of an intimidation campaign by insurgents using violence to disrupt the elections. Under threat of death, they have been warned not to run, not to vote, not to participate. If they stay away from the polls, the attackers' logic goes, the elections will be seen as invalid, the fragile sectarian balance in Iraq will be upset, and Iraq might sink into a civil war among Sunni Arabs, the majority Shiite Muslims and the Kurds, who are Sunnis but are ethnically distinct from Iraq's more numerous Arabs.

Coaching Iraq's New Candidates, Discreetly
U.S.-Funded Programs Nurture Voting Process

By Karl Vick and Robin Wright
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, January 26, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- The midwives of democracy toil behind the towering gray blast walls that encase every Western enterprise in the new Iraq. This one, in an anonymous cluster of buildings, houses the country's first school for political candidates.

There is a miniature television studio, where novice office-seekers learn the fine art of the sound bite and the value of "earned media." There are conference rooms, where instructors from countries that have already left war behind conduct seminars on "Six Steps to Planning and Winning a Campaign." (Step 3: Targeting the Voters).

A graphic artist stands by with advice on getting a party's poster noticed on the cluttered streets of Baghdad. A former congressional staffer stands by to emphasize the vital difference between an army of volunteers and an armed militia.

And on the rooftops of nearby buildings, snipers simply stand by, their vigil as discreet as the low-profile democracy-building effort underway below.

Funded by U.S. taxpayers, the Baghdad office of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs stands at the ambitious heart of the American effort to make Iraq a model democracy in the Arab world. In the 13 months it has operated in the country, the institute has tutored political aspirants from all of Iraq's major parties, trained about 10,000 domestic election observers and nurtured thousands of ordinary citizens seeking to build the institutions that form the backbone of free societies.

The work is in many ways entirely routine for the institute -- as it is for the two other Washington-based organizations that are here advising on the architecture of democracy: the International Republican Institute (IRI), which declined requests for an interview, and the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), which along with the United Nations is providing crucial technical assistance to Iraq's electoral commission. The groups work in scores of countries, from those in Eastern Europe to Yemen and Indonesia, and arrived in Baghdad with solid reputations for encouraging democratic norms. Together, the three have been allotted as much as $90 million for their work in Iraq.

But such is the state of Iraq less than a week before elections for the National Assembly that the Democratic Institute's instructors dare not see their names in print. "You can say, 'an official with an international organization that operates in Iraq,' " said the institute's country director, a former political operative and public relations executive who, like his boss, happens to be Canadian. He later agreed to allow the use of the organization's name.

The overriding concern is security. In Iraq, schools are being bombed simply because they might be pressed into service as polling stations Sunday. No sane group intimately involved in mounting the vote dares wave from atop its blast walls.

But there are other good reasons for a certain discretion in Iraq.

"If you walk into a coffee shop and say, 'Hi, I'm from an American organization and I'm here to help you,' that's not going to help," said one instructor, who was born in Iraq and is well versed in the region's widely held perception of U.S. hegemony. "If you say you're here to encourage democracy, they say you're here to control the Middle East."

Let's just say that your ordinary Iraqi has a higher level of sophistication about this "democracy" than the entire US Washington press corps.

Their Voices

Iraq election log: 25 January 2005

As Iraqis prepare to hold a landmark election the BBC News website resumes its daily Iraq log. For two weeks, we will be publishing a range of accounts from people inside Iraq about their day-to-day lives.

You can bookmark this page and come back to read the latest posts each day.

Flu Update

CIDRAP is the website of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. They have some of the most through information on avian influenza and the public health implications of H5N1. The page was just updated today. It is chilling reading:

# If an influenza pandemic were to occur in the near future, vaccine for the pandemic strain would not be readily available for a number of months, as noted in the previous section. Even though some developed countries have stockpiles of antiviral agents effective against influenza, supplies of these agents would be extremely limited (see References: Hayden 2004). It is unlikely that they would have a significant effect on curtailing spread of the pandemic unless a mobile stockpile with adequate supplies was created for use in the area where the virus emerges (see References: Monto 2005; WHO: Influenza pandemic preparedness and response 2005). Therefore, prevention and treatment options would essentially not be available during the initial wave of the pandemic.

# If the next pandemic strain is highly virulent (such as the 1918 strain) the global death toll could be dramatic. The current plans generally do not address the social, political, or economic issues that would likely be associated with an ongoing influenza pandemic. It is very possible that substantial disruption of basic services (such as health care, food, clothing, provision of utilities [eg, water, electricity], and transportation will occur. Furthermore, international trade will likely be impacted, which could have serious global economical and societal consequences.

Look at that third bullet.

Rising Powers

The Washington Note pulls an excellent op-ed by Michael Lind from behind the subscription wall at the Financial Times:

How the U.S. Became the World's Dispensable Nation
by Michael Lind

In a second inaugural address tinged with evangelical zeal, George W. Bush declared: "Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world." The peoples of the world, however, do not seem to be listening. A new world order is indeed emerging - but its architecture is being drafted in Asia and Europe, at meetings to which Americans have not been invited.

Consider Asean Plus Three (APT), which unites the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations with China, Japan and South Korea. This group has the potential to be the world's largest trade bloc, dwarfing the European Union and North American Free Trade Association. The deepening ties of the APT member states represent a major diplomatic defeat for the US, which hoped to use the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum to limit the growth of Asian economic regionalism at American expense. In the same way, recent moves by South American countries to bolster an economic community represent a clear rejection of US aims to dominate a western-hemisphere free trade zone.

Consider, as well, the EU's rapid progress toward military independence. American protests failed to prevent the EU establishing its own military planning agency, independent of the Nato alliance (and thus of Washington). Europe is building up its own rapid reaction force. And despite US resistance, the EU is developing Galileo, its own satellite network, which will break the monopoly of the US global positioning satellite system.

The participation of China in Europe's Galileo project has alarmed the US military. But China shares an interest with other aspiring space powers in preventing American control of space for military and commercial uses. Even while collaborating with Europe on Galileo, China is partnering Brazil to launch satellites. And in an unprecedented move, China recently agreed to host Russian forces for joint Russo-Chinese military exercises.

The US is being sidelined even in the area that Mr Bush identified in last week's address as America's mission: the promotion of democracy and human rights. The EU has devoted far more resources to consolidating democracy in post-communist Europe than has the US. By contrast, under Mr Bush, the US hypocritically uses the promotion of democracy as the rationale for campaigns against states it opposes for strategic reasons. Washington denounces tyranny in Iran but tolerates it in Pakistan. In Iraq, the goal of democratisation was invoked only after the invasion, which was justified earlier by claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was collaborating with al-Qaeda.

Nor is American democracy a shining example to mankind. The present one-party rule in the US has been produced in part by the artificial redrawing of political districts to favour Republicans, reinforcing the domination of money in American politics. America's judges -- many of whom will be appointed by Mr Bush -- increasingly behave as partisan political activists in black robes. America's antiquated winner-take-all electoral system has been abandoned by most other democracies for more inclusive versions of proportional representation.

In other areas of global moral and institutional reform, the US today is a follower rather than a leader. Human rights? Europe has banned the death penalty and torture, while the US is a leading practitioner of execution. Under Mr Bush, the US has constructed an international military gulag in which the torture of suspects has frequently occurred. The international rule of law? For generations, promoting international law in collaboration with other nations was a US goal. But the neoconservatives who dominate Washington today mock the very idea of international law. The next US attorney general will be the White House counsel who scorned the Geneva Conventions as obsolete.

A decade ago, American triumphalists mocked those who argued that the world was becoming multipolar, rather than unipolar. Where was the evidence of balancing against the US, they asked. Today the evidence of foreign co-operation to reduce American primacy is everywhere -- from the increasing importance of regional trade blocs that exclude the US to international space projects and military exercises in which the US is conspicuous by its absence.

Most internationalists expect the Eurozone to be a counterbalancing power rather than a hyperpower. As we look down the road, India and then China will become the next hyperpowers, should they decide to use their economic assets to create a military which can project itself around the world. They certainly have the population base to do so.

All of this, of course, is off the radar of those who get a steady diet of American media, all of whom subscribe to the theory of American exceptionalism.

Propaganda

CNN hammered the hell out of the "significance" of this story yesterday. In the cold, clear light of morning, it looks a little different:

Iraq Announces Capture Of Aide to Wanted Militant

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 25, 2005; Page A12

BAGHDAD, Jan. 24 -- Iraqi officials announced Monday that they had captured a top lieutenant of insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi who admitted involvement in a substantial share of the car bombings carried out in Iraq since August 2003.

Sami Muhammad Ali Said Jaaf, who was taken into custody nine days ago, claimed to have supervised construction of 32 car bombs, according to Thaer Naqib, a spokesman for the interim Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi.

Naqib said Jaaf, who used the nom de guerre Abu Umar Kurdi, was captured in a raid in Baghdad Jan. 15. There was no way to immediately verify Jaaf's admissions or the government's claim that he had been involved in 75 percent of the car bombings in Baghdad since 2003.

"I think they do have somebody fairly important," said a senior U.S. diplomat in Baghdad, adding that he was not familiar with details of the arrest.

Juan Cole says:

The announcement of the arrest of a key associate of the shadowy Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was accompanied by hype that he was behind most of the spectacular car bombings in Iraq for the past 18 months. That seems silly to me, almost an insult to our intelligence. How could one man be behind so many attacks? Isn't it much more likely that they were the work of numerous Baath military and Salafi cells? My guess is that the interim government in Iraq is attempting to convince voters that it will be safe to come out on Sunday. This arrest will make virtually no impact on the guerrilla war, which is likely to go on for at least a decade.

Betrayal of Trust

Army Plans To Keep Iraq Troop Level Through '06
Year-Long Active-Duty Stints Likely to Continue

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 25, 2005; Page A01

In a related development, Senate and House aides said yesterday that the White House will announce today plans to request an additional $80 billion to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That would come on top of $25 billion already appropriated for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. White House budget spokesman Chad Kolton declined to comment.

White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten is to describe the package to lawmakers today, but the budget request will come later, the aides said. Administration officials have said privately for several weeks that they will seek the additional funding, the result of continuing high costs incurred battling an unexpectedly strong insurgency in Iraq.

Budget Director Josh Bolten:

“We don't anticipate requesting anything additional for the balance of this year.” (7/28/03)

Go Ask Alice

Fear of civil war as Sunnis turn away from polls

Leaders tell of sense of exclusion after US refuses to let violence delay vote
Rory McCarthy in Baghdad
Monday January 24, 2005

Guardian

Just two months ago Ayad al-Samarrai's offices were crowded with staff drawing up plans for their election campaign. Today the offices are deserted.

Iraq's elections are less than a week away but in the compound of the country's largest Sunni Muslim party the corridors are empty and there is not one campaign poster on the wall.

The Iraqi Islamic party, which Mr Samarrai, an engineer from Baghdad, joined as a young man, withdrew from the elections last month saying the violence raging through so much of Iraq, and Sunni frustration with the occupation, meant the vote on January 30 could never be legitimate.

It was a decisive moment that underlined the sense of bitterness and exclusion many in Iraq's Sunni community feel about the unfolding political process.

The Islamic party, founded secretly in Iraq in 1960 and loosely sharing the ideals of the influential Muslim Brotherhood, counts its supporters in the provinces north and north-west of Baghdad that have been ravaged by the insurgency since the war.

The prospect of many Sunni voters going to the polls in towns such as Falluja, Ramadi or even Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, is slim.

"If these people are not able to join in the elections, how can it be fair?" said Mr Samarrai, the editor of the party's newsletter and a former exile who spent many years in the Emirates and later in Leeds. "We asked the Americans how they are going to solve these problems. We gave proposals but we got nothing."

The Red Queen shook her head, `You may call it "nonsense" if you like,' she said, ` but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!'

Same as the Old Boss

A.C.L.U. Presents Accusations of Serious Abuse of Iraqi Civilians
By NEIL A. LEWIS

Published: January 25, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - The American Civil Liberties Union released documents on Monday describing complaints of serious abuse of Iraqi civilians, including reports of electric shocks and forced sodomy, and accused the military of not thoroughly investigating the cases.

The documents list dozens of allegations of abuse at American detention centers - the use of cigarettes to burn prisoners, aggressive dogs, electric shocks, sexual humiliation and beatings - that began at about the same time such acts were occurring at Abu Ghraib prison.

But it is not always clear whether every case described is a new incident; many details, including the names of victims and of the accused, were blacked out before the documents were provided to the A.C.L.U. as part of its litigation.

Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer for the organization, said gaps in the files made it difficult to draw any definite conclusions about a particular case. "But overall there does seem to be a clear pattern here, and that is that it is difficult to say the government was aggressive in investigating these allegations of abuse," he said.

Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, an Army spokeswoman, declined to discuss any particular case mentioned in the documents. But she said, "The Army has aggressively investigated all credible allegations of detainee abuse and we've held soldiers accountable for their actions."

The documents list several sites where abuses are reported to have taken place, many of them at the detention center at Adhamiya Palace, one of Saddam Hussein's villas in Baghdad. The documents contain allegations from detainees about being abused and statements from American contractors who said they saw the effects of beatings.

In one case, a detainee said that while at Adhamiya Palace, his nose was pinched while water was poured down his throat, a wooden stick was inserted forcefully into his anus and electric shock was applied to his genitals. Some of the allegations were directed against Iraqi policemen. One contractor who said he was assigned to screen detainees brought to Abu Ghraib said that many who had come from Adhamiya arrived with serious injuries, including one boy with a bleeding rectum. He said the boy had told him that an Iraqi policeman had sodomized him with a soda bottle and that American soldiers were present.

I notice that we're not hearing much about Saddam's "rape rooms" these days

The Wisdom of the Markets

Listen to the Central Bankers and the entrepreneurs. We be in a heap 'o trouble, but this isn't new to you.

Dollar's Steep Slide Adding to Tensions U.S. Faces Abroad
By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: January 25, 2005

This article was reported by David E. Sanger, Mark Landler and Keith Bradsher and written by Mr. Sanger.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - After a first term in which terrorism and war dominated President Bush's foreign policy agenda, his allies in Europe and Asia suspect that his next confrontation with the world could take on a very different cast: a potential currency crisis, in which a steep plunge in the value of the dollar touches off economic waves around the world.

Already, the tensions over the dollar are becoming a recurring source of friction, a conflict that does not reverberate as loudly as the differences over Iraq but may be as deeply felt. At a meeting in Paris on Monday, the finance ministers of Germany and France complained that Europe had unjustly borne the brunt of the dollar's decline, and called for coordinated action to stop it.

"Europe has until now paid too big a share in this readjustment," Hervé Gaymard, the French finance minister, said. His German counterpart, Hans Eichel, said the United States needed to reduce its deficits, adding "each one has to play its role."

Two months ago, similar sentiments came from China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, whose nation is at the center of a struggle with Washington over currency policy. He complained about the fall of the dollar, asking, "Shouldn't the relevant authorities be doing something about this?"

In an interview just before President Bush's inauguration, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow played down the tensions. "We understand that deficits matter," he said, insisting that the tight budget Mr. Bush is expected to send to Congress next month should give foreigners and the financial markets the solace they seek.

But should the dollar continue to fall - if, for example, global investors determined that Mr. Bush did not have the will to hold spending down - it would not only add to tensions, analysts said. It might also force up interest rates at home to keep foreigners interested in financing America's need to borrow more than $600 billion a year to cover its gap in the current account. The current account is the broadest measure of the trade and financial flows into and out of the country.

To be sure, the dollar's fall may never reach crisis levels, and in the last few weeks, after a more or less steady fall of almost 35 percent against the euro and 24 percent against the Japanese yen over the last three years, the dollar has stabilized a bit. Many experts argue that a further decline, if relatively modest and gradual, is entirely manageable.

Administration officials, along with a number of like-minded economists, contend that the nation's record trade and current account deficits are not particularly worrisome, a reflection more of strong foreign interest in investing in the American economy than any sign of global weakness.

But across Asia and Europe, a wide range of officials and analysts worry that Mr. Bush's economic team may not be up to the challenge of grappling with the issue. They contend that Washington has retreated from efforts to marshal the biggest economies of the world into a mutual effort at more robust and balanced growth.

Many European politicians and exporters cannot shake the suspicion that the Bush administration, despite its statements supporting a strong currency, has been perfectly happy to watch from the sidelines while the dollar heads down.

At a moment of surging American trade deficits that have reached a record share of economic output, a falling dollar makes American exports more competitive and puts imports from Europe at a particular disadvantage.

"It's hard to tell an entrepreneur to wait two years for a policy to change when he says, 'I've got to deliver my goods tomorrow,' " said Anton Boerner, the president of BGA, the Berlin-based association of wholesalers and exporters.

That "strong dollar" thing is working out so well, while the economy deteriorates at home and the rest of the world is noticing. Hmm, we might have a problem here.

What Liberal Media?

Dr. Alterman is in the house:

Have death squad, will travel

• January 24, 2005 | 11:31 AM ET

One weakness of liberals is our inability to credit right-wingers with a sufficient degree of malevolence. During the Reagan administration, for instance, no liberal would ever have gone so far as accuse the president of selling arms to terrorists and using the profits to fund an illegal war. You would have been called crazy. Similarly, no one ever accused the Reagan administration of actually setting up and funding the murderous death squads that killed innocent civilians by the tens of thousands in El Salvador at the time. The farthest anyone would go would be to accuse them of failing to rein them in. Well, check out this quote in Sy Hersh’s latest New Yorker piece, here, attributed to a former high level intelligence officer:

P.P.P.S. I see the guest list for “Meet the Press” represented the following SCLM bias. Republican conservative John Negroponte; Republican conservative Bill Thomas; Republican conservative Stephen Hayes (peddling a discredited theory about the phony Saddam-Al Qaida connection) and honest, centrist journalist Robin Wright. Repeat after me: What liberal media?

Bump Goes Wonkette

The Washingtonian's Harry Jaffe makes some predictions

Fearless Predictions: Bushies Vs. the Press, Round Two

The inaugural balls are so yesterday—so let the second round of warfare between the White House press corps and the Bush team begin.

Final prediction: President Bush will point to Jim VandeHei at a press conference and call him by his nickname, “Vandy.” One can only hope VandeHei isn’t so flattered that he takes the edge off his coverage.

Spy vs. Spy

Gentlemen, choose your weapons.

Social Security Changes, Tax Cuts Among GOP Senators' 10 Priorities
Gay-Marriage Ban Does Not Make List

By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 25, 2005; Page A13

Senate Republican leaders outlined their 10 top legislative priorities yesterday, focusing mainly on cutting taxes and restructuring Social Security. But two notable omissions -- changes to immigration laws and a ban on same-sex marriage -- underscored tensions with their conservative wing.

Senate Democrats announced their own priorities, including increases in military personnel, the minimum wage and education spending. But with Democrats having lost seats in both chambers last fall, the GOP is better positioned to move its agenda aggressively in the newly formed 109th Congress.

The Senate Republicans' top 10 list calls for adding private accounts to Social Security, extending President Bush's tax cuts, limiting personal-injury lawsuits and expanding domestic oil exploration. But GOP Senate leaders moved cautiously on more contentious issues, including abortion, same-sex marriage and immigration.

Although their House counterparts are preparing to offer anti-terrorism legislation that includes broad crackdowns on illegal immigration, Senate Republicans did not mention immigration in the legislative agenda they outlined for reporters yesterday. With several Republican senators supporting expanded guest-worker programs, "we don't have a consensus" in the Senate GOP caucus, said its third-ranking leader, Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.).

A proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage -- a priority to many conservative activists -- also was omitted from the list of bills that will be numbered S1 through S10, signifying their importance to Republicans. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said the marriage provision will be designated Senate Joint Resolution 1, "because it's not a legislative bill, it's a joint resolution."

Senate Democrats Speak of Slowing Confirmation Votes
By CARL HULSE

Published: January 25, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - Trying to show that they remain a force despite their reduced numbers, Senate Democrats on Monday threatened new hurdles for President Bush's cabinet choices and expressed deep misgivings about the planned Social Security changes at the heart of this year's Republican agenda.

Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota said he was mulling whether to try to stall consideration of Michael O. Leavitt, Mr. Bush's choice for health secretary, unless Mr. Dorgan was guaranteed a vote on allowing importation of cheaper prescription drugs.

In addition, a growing number of Democrats are raising issues about the selection of Alberto R. Gonzales as attorney general, a nomination initially headed for quick approval.

The political problems for the nominees arose after Democrats last week blocked a quick vote on the approval of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state. As many as a dozen Democrats intend to use the Senate floor on Tuesday as a platform to lay out their objections to Ms. Rice, tying her to what they see as the administration's mistakes in Iraq.

"The honeymoon is over and we are now in the full throes of our new marital arrangement here," said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip, after he and other Democratic leaders introduced a priority list on Monday sharply at odds with that put forward by Republicans.

While Republicans listed changes in Social Security as their No. 1 objective, Democrats made enlarging the armed forces and providing new military benefits as their top goal, rejecting the idea that the retirement program needed urgent repair. A poll of all Democratic senators by the Democratic staff of the Senate Finance Committee found none who supported diverting Social Security tax revenue into personal investment accounts, the centerpiece of Mr. Bush's initiative.

"This isn't a crisis, so why should we be lurching forward?" asked Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the new Democratic leader.

Walk twenty paces, turn and fire. Good luck.

All of Life

Abortion Foes Stage Protest of Roe vs. Wade
Bush Tells Protesters He Supports 'Culture of Life'

By Laurie Kellman
The Associated Press
Monday, January 24, 2005; 12:47 PM

President Bush told abortion foes on Monday he shared their support for "a culture of life" and claimed progress in passing legislation to protect the vulnerable.

"We need most of all to change hearts and that is what we're doing," Bush said as anti-abortion activists marked the 32nd anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion with a day of rallies, protests and other activities.

The issue took on new urgency with the likelihood of a high court vacancy.

Bush addressed marchers by phone from the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., where he had spent the weekend.

Every anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision, prompts demonstrations by opponents and proponents of abortion rights. Activists on both sides of the abortion issue marched in demonstrations across the country Saturday, the actual anniversary of the Jan. 23 decision.

This year there is increasing speculation about Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's health. Three other justices have had cancer.

One or more court vacancies would give President Bush the chance to install another justice or justices who oppose the Roe decision, increasing the likelihood that at some point, the ruling could be overturned.

Bush conceded that a society "where every child is welcome...may still be some way away."

Still, he said, he was working with Congress to pass "good, solid legislation to protect the vulnerable." He cited his signing of legislation last year to outlaw certain late-term abortions.

"You know, we come from many, different backgrounds, but what unites us is our understanding that the essence of civilization is this: The strong have a duty to protect the weak," Bush said. He has said he supports a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion, but has not actively pushed for it.

Bush also said that he would continue "seeking common ground where possible and persuading increasing numbers of our fellow citizens of the rightness of our cause. This is the path of the culture of life that we seek for our country."

On Monday, abortion opponents staged a rally before a march from the Ellipse to the Supreme Court. Other groups opposed to abortion rights were holding events on Capitol Hill.

Culture of life, my ass. This is the same guy who enjoyed mocking the people the state of Texas is so efficient at executing (state sponsored murder is still murder.)

But I read this article and it made me sad more than anything else. Sad that none of these people can get exercised enough about the way this country treats its children to get up a march over it. Sad that prenatal care isn't available to millions of mothers. Sad that the children who go to bed hungry every night will never have a group of angry adults marching for them. Sad that "prolife" is only "prolife" for fetuses and not for the young lives of children.

Breakout

Forbes has a frightening article today. The World Health Organization has documented the first human to human transmission of H5N1 avian flu in Thailand. The WHO scientist they spoke with said that there have probably been other cases, but this is the first documented case.

What the epidemiologists will be looking for next is how quickly the virus mutates to increase the efficiency of its capability to spread through human populations. Since the virus is only a plane ride away from the rest of us, this bears careful watching.

Hook 'em

Phishers Drop Hooks Into Smaller Streams
Online Scam Artists Now Targeting Regional-Bank Customers

By Brian Krebs
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Monday, January 24, 2005; 9:48 AM

As the nation's largest financial institutions deploy increasingly sophisticated measures to prevent Internet scams, online fraudsters are targeting smaller, regional U.S. banks whose customers may be less attuned to the threat.

Experts say the shift is the latest trend in a technological arms race between Internet con artists dubbed "phishers" and the e-commerce and banking companies they target. Phishers use fake Web sites and e-mail messages in an attempt to trick customers into disclosing valuable personal financial information.

"We have found that financial institutions and other targets are starting to purchase and deploy solutions to help battle phishing," said David Jevans, chairman of the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), a coalition of banks and technology companies. "As they do this, phishers are starting to move on to softer targets."

The majority of attacks still involve a handful of global financial institutions with hundreds of billions of dollars in assets. These banks are attractive targets because they often boast large numbers of customers who opt for online banking services.

The new targets, by comparison, often operate in only a handful of U.S. states and serve fewer customers. In October, phishers first targeted customers of Madison, Wisc.-based First Federal Capital Bank, which has 90 branches in three states and about $3.3 billion in assets.

In November, scams struck Wayzata, Minn.-based TCF Bank and Columbus, Ohio-based Huntington Bancshares Inc., each a regional institution covering six states. That same month, attackers hit People's Bank, which has branches only in Connecticut.

The new attacks varied in complexity, but all shared a common technique. Bank customers received an e-mail message urging them to update or verify their account data. A link in the message took them to a genuine-looking bank Web site -- actually a fake created by the attacker -- where any information entered would fall into the hands of the e-mail sender.

This new tactic is aimed at older, more rural and less sophisticated users, who are the typical customers of the smaller, regional outfits. If you have family who fall into that category, send them a link to this story.

I get phished AT LEAST once a day. I had two of them waiting in my inbox when I hit the computer this morning.

Singing the Blues

Perhaps this is the cause of my malaise?

And now for something completely dreary

David Ward
Monday January 24, 2005
The Guardian

If you stumbled out of bed in the dark this morning, fell over the cat, found no milk in the fridge for your porridge, had a row with your partner, received a rude letter from the bank, got covered in snow at the bus stop and finally arrived at work in time to be made redundant, you will already know that today is the most depressing day of the year.

And if you want scientific proof, then Cliff Arnall of Cardiff University has it.

He settled on January 24 after using an elaborate formula expressing the delicate interplay of lousy weather, post-Christmas debt, time elapsed since yuletide indulgence, failed new year resolutions, motivation levels, and the desperate need to have something to look forward to.

In short, all that's left of Christmas today is credit card bills and a pervading sense that the next holiday is months away.

An insurance company added to the gloom by saying that drivers are more than usually miserable in January, losing their tempers with those other road users who have no right to be driving in the outside lane at 48mph and impeding progress to a vital meeting in Birmingham at noon.

This syndrome, dubbed winter driver's disorder, could be the cause of two million accidents (but not all happening today, which happens also to be the 40th anniversary of the death of Sir Winston Churchill).

Yesterday the recruitment firm totaljobs.com stirred the gloomy pot by saying that 24/1 despair is likely to overwhelm employees. Michael Robinson, the company's marketing director, suggested that bosses could be extra nice to their staff today.

He suggested they should offer encouragements ranging from free tea (big deal) to an office party.

"Many workers are feeling the winter blues and it is up to employers to motivate their staff and keep them happy," he said.

"[Today] provides an ideal opportunity for employers to acknowledge the hard work that employees put into a company throughout the year."

Funny, it's always the month of February that gets to me, the longest 28 days of the year. I've always said that asparagus was God's way of apologizing for February.

More Disaster

Countdown to global catastrophe

Climate change: report warns point of no return may be reached in 10 years, leading to droughts, agricultural failure and water shortages
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor

24 January 2005

The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked for the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow - and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already.

The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world - and it is remarkably brief. In as little as 10 years, or even less, their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have been reached.

The report, Meeting The Climate Challenge, is aimed at policymakers in every country, from national leaders down. It has been timed to coincide with Tony Blair's promised efforts to advance climate change policy in 2005 as chairman of both the G8 group of rich countries and the European Union.

And it breaks new ground by putting a figure - for the first time in such a high-level document - on the danger point of global warming, that is, the temperature rise beyond which the world would be irretrievably committed to disastrous changes. These could include widespread agricultural failure, water shortages and major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rise and the death of forests - with the added possibility of abrupt catastrophic events such as "runaway" global warming, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, or the switching-off of the Gulf Stream.

The report says this point will be two degrees centigrade above the average world temperature prevailing in 1750 before the industrial revolution, when human activities - mainly the production of waste gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), which retain the sun's heat in the atmosphere - first started to affect the climate. But it points out that global average temperature has already risen by 0.8 degrees since then, with more rises already in the pipeline - so the world has little more than a single degree of temperature latitude before the crucial point is reached.

More ominously still, it assesses the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere after which the two-degree rise will become inevitable, and says it will be 400 parts per million by volume (ppm) of CO2.

The current level is 379ppm, and rising by more than 2ppm annually - so it is likely that the vital 400ppm threshold will be crossed in just 10 years' time, or even less (although the two-degree temperature rise might take longer to come into effect).

"There is an ecological timebomb ticking away," said Stephen Byers, the former transport secretary, who co-chaired the task force that produced the report with the US Republican senator Olympia Snowe. It was assembled by the Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK, the Centre for American Progress in the US, and The Australia Institute.The group's chief scientific adviser is Dr Rakendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

So much to look forward to this year. If it isn't avian influenza coming to get us, it's global climate change, impending economic collapse and the Bush Justice Department. Lord, I think I need a vacation.

Down, Down, Down

Central banks 'shunning dollar'

Is the dollar's global hegemony waning?

Many of the world's central banks are starting to look to the euro to fill their currency reserves instead of the dollar, a survey suggests.

Some economists have suggested that the two could ease their purchases, making it more difficult for the US to support its borrowing.

Dollar slides as short positions crumble

By Steve Johnson in London
Published: January 24 2005 11:51 | Last updated: January 24 2005 17:28

The currency market performed a passable impression of a rabbit caught in the headlights on Monday, seemingly paralysed by fear ahead of a barrage of set-piece events.

For weeks the market has been hanging on every word for hints as to whether China will come under renewed pressure to revalue the renminbi at the G7 meeting of central bankers and finance ministers on February 4-5.

The smart money is that G7 will change nothing. But regular comments, such as those by Herve Gaymard, the French finanace minister, that Europe has borne too much of the burden of dollar weakness and the issue should be addressed at the G7, have been enough to keep the issue bubbling.

Even outside the G7, event risk is rising. This weekend’s Iraqi elections, President Bush’s State of the Union address and the first Federal Reserve meeting of the year have all been cited as reasons not to trade.

Data released late on Friday suggested that traders had taken some of their chips off the table. Net short-dollar positions against six major currencies fell to $7.2bn as of January 18, from $10.9bn the week before, the smallest position since September 2004.

This was potentially dollar-bearish news, and indeed it contributed to a modest early sell-off. “This could signal a downturn in the dollar’s fortunes as traders are now clear to initiate new short positions,” said Chris Gothard, currencies strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman.

Bad News

Study Says All Stem Cell Lines Tainted

By Karen Kaplan, Times Staff Writer

All human embryonic stem cell lines approved for use in federally funded research are contaminated with a foreign molecule from mice that may make them risky for use in medical therapies, according to a study released Sunday.

Researchers at UC San Diego and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla report that if the stem cells are transplanted into people, the cells could provoke an immune system attack that would wipe out their ability to deliver cures for diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and diabetes.

The finding is a setback to the Bush administration's controversial policy that provides federal funding only for research using embryonic stem cell lines that were created before August 2001. Evidence that all such lines are contaminated supports long-standing concerns among researchers that the lines eligible for federal money are insufficient to propel research forward.

The scientists who wrote the study say it could take at least a year or two — if it is possible at all — to find a way to salvage the stem cells by wiping them clean of the mouse molecules.

"We don't know, but I'm trying to be optimistic," said Fred H. Gage, a professor of genetics at the Salk Institute who co-wrote the paper in the current issue of Nature Medicine.

The researchers said the safest course was to create fresh batches of stem cells that were free of contamination from animal molecules — a process that could also take years.

The need to develop new, uncontaminated embryonic stem cell lines would bolster the influence of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, a $3-billion funding agency established by state voters in November to circumvent President Bush's restrictions.

"This is why Prop. 71 is so important," Susan Fisher, a UC San Francisco professor of cell and tissue biology, said of California's stem cell research measure. "We will be able to do this basic research to be able to really produce a strong foundation on which this work can continue."

The thing that I don't get is that stem cell research holds out the most promise for new therapies of any research approach kicking around right now. You'd think that Bush buddy Big Pharma would be all over this.

The First Victim is Truth

The Invasion of Falluja: A Study in the Subversion of Truth
by Mary Trotochaud and Rick McDowell

Falluja should go down in history as a case study on how truth is subverted, co-opted, buried, and ignored. The first US-led siege of Falluja, a city of 300,000 people, resulted in a defeat for Coalition forces. Prior to the second siege in November, its citizens were given two choices: leave the city or risk dying as enemy insurgents. The people of Falluja remembered the siege of April all too well. They remembered being trapped when Coalition forces surrounded and blockaded the city and seized the main hospital, leaving the population cut off from food, water, and medical supplies. Families remembered the fighting in the streets and the snipers on the rooftops, which prevented movement by civilians. They remembered burying more than 600 neighbors - women, children, and men - in makeshift graves in schoolyards and soccer fields.

Under threat of a new siege, an estimated 50,000 families or 250,000 people fled Falluja. They fled with the knowledge that they would live as refugees with few or no resources. They left behind fathers, husbands, brothers and sons, as males between the ages of 15 and 45 were denied safe passage out of the city by US-led forces. If the displaced families of Falluja were fortunate, they fled to the homes of relatives in the surrounding towns and villages or to the city of Baghdad - homes that were already overcrowded and overburdened after 20 months of war and occupation. Many families are forced to survive in fields, vacant lots, and abandoned buildings without access to shelter, water, electricity, food or medical care and alongside tens of thousands of displaced and homeless people already living in the rubble of Baghdad.

What of the estimated 50,000 residents who did not leave Falluja? The US military suggested there were a couple of thousand insurgents in the city before the siege, but in the end chose to treat all the remaining inhabitants as enemy combatants.

Preceding the siege, journalists were prevented from entering the city, the main hospital was seized by US forces and access denied to the wounded. The population was subjected to daily aerial bombardments. The use of cluster bombs in urban areas was recorded. Doctors reported seeing patients whose skin was melted from exposure to phosphorous bombs. Water and electricity were cut off and people quickly ran out of food as they were trapped in their homes by sniper fire. Families trying to flee the devastated city were executed, including a family of five, shot down trying to cross the river to safety; their murder was witnessed by an AP photographer. With few independent journalists reporting on the carnage, the international humanitarian community in exile and the Red Cross and Red Crescent prevented from entering the besieged city, the world was forced to rely on reporting from journalists embedded with US forces. In the US press, we saw casualties reported for Falluja as follows: number of US soldiers dead; number of Iraqi soldiers dead; number of "guerillas" or "insurgents" dead. Nowhere were the civilian casualties reported in those first weeks.

Although there has been resounding silence about the humanitarian disaster in Falluja, the true cost to the civilian population is emerging. Preliminary estimates are as high as 6,000 Iraqis killed, a third of the city destroyed, and over 200,000 civilians living as refugees. It is estimated that it could be months before people are allowed to return to what is left of their homes. According to a UN emergency working group on this humanitarian crisis, there are shortages of food items and cooking fuel. The temperatures have dropped, underscoring an urgent need for winterization items and appropriate shelter. The International Committee for the Red Cross reported on December 23 that three of the city's water purification plants had been destroyed and the fourth badly damaged.

Aid organizations have repeatedly been denied access to the city, hospitals, and refugee populations in the surrounding areas. Sporadic fighting continues as some insurgent forces return. Iraqi National Security Advisor Qassem Daoud has warned of explosive ordnance still hidden in debris and on the streets. Residents seeking to return are required to go through intense security checks before being allowed to re-enter Falluja.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights voiced deep concern for the civilians caught up in the fighting. She said all those guilty of violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws - including the targeting of civilians, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, killing of injured persons, and the use of human shields - must be brought to justice.

The Orwellian double-talk of the Administration and Pentagon officials belies the reality "on the ground." US actions in Falluja precipitated a tersely worded proclamation from the Muslim Scholars Association denouncing the violence and calling for a boycott of upcoming elections, claiming that "elections are being held over the corpses of those killed in Falluja and the blood of the wounded."

A fantasy of freedom

If Bush wanted to tackle tyranny, he could start with regimes under US control. But liberty clearly has limits, says Gary Younge.

Monday January 24, 2005
The Guardian

Bush's inauguration speech was packed with truisms, axioms, platitudes and principles that appear reasonable at first glance. The trouble is they are contradicted by the reality he has created and continues to support.

As he delivered his address, you could almost whisper the caveats. "America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains [apart from in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay], or that women welcome humiliation and servitude [apart from in Saudi Arabia] or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies [apart from Uzbekistan and Israel]."

Such hypocrisy is not new. When Mr Bush said "Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom and make their own way", nobody imagined he was referring to the Bolivian peasants fighting oil price hikes and globalisation or the landless Venezuelans taking over farms.

The agenda for a second Bush term represents not a change in direction but an acceleration of the colossal and murderous folly that he, and most of his predecessors, have pursued.

The damage that this selective notion of liberty inflicts on the rest of the world should by now be pretty clear. According to the independent website Iraqbodycount.net, reported civilian deaths in Iraq have already reached between 15,365 and 17,582 since the war started, while the recent study for the Lancet estimated the death toll at 100,000 at least, and probably higher; meanwhile, the number is growing remorselessly. Next weekend's elections in Iraq - which take place in the midst of a war against foreign occupiers with most candidates too scared to campaign, the location of polling sites kept secret until the last minute and key areas unable to participate - have become not an example of democracy but an embarrassment to the very idea of democracy.

Meanwhile, a global poll for the BBC last week showed the US more isolated than ever, with people in 18 out of 21 countries saying that they expect a second Bush term to have a negative impact on peace and security.

What is less clear is whether most Americans understand that this isolation leaves them more vulnerable to attack. Ms Rice last week promised "a conversation, not a monologue" with the rest of the world. But as the situation in Iraq shows, conversations that start with "D'you want a piece of this?" rarely end well for anybody.

Both Osama bin Laden and the Taliban have shown that the tyrants the US supports today can easily turn against it tomorrow while fostering resentment among their victims. Yet the idea that the US is a civilising force endowed with benevolent intentions is still as prevalent within the US as it is rejected outside it.

Indeed, Tony Blair seems to be the only foreign leader who still holds to the mixture of wishful thinking, wilful ignorance and warped logic behind the idea that Bush is leading humanitarian interventions at the barrel of a gun.

The American Way

Dream On America
The U.S. Model: For years, much of the world did aspire to the American way of life. But today countries are finding more appealing systems in their own backyards.

By Andrew Moravcsik
Newsweek International

The gulf between how Americans view themselves and how the world views them was summed up in a poll last week by the BBC. Fully 71 percent of Americans see the United States as a source of good in the world. More than half view Bush's election as positive for global security. Other studies report that 70 percent have faith in their domestic institutions and nearly 80 percent believe "American ideas and customs" should spread globally.

Foreigners take an entirely different view: 58 percent in the BBC poll see Bush's re-election as a threat to world peace. Among America's traditional allies, the figure is strikingly higher: 77 percent in Germany, 64 percent in Britain and 82 percent in Turkey. Among the 1.3 billion members of the Islamic world, public support for the United States is measured in single digits. Only Poland, the Philippines and India viewed Bush's second Inaugural positively.

Tellingly, the anti-Bushism of the president's first term is giving way to a more general anti-Americanism. A plurality of voters (the average is 70 percent) in each of the 21 countries surveyed by the BBC oppose sending any troops to Iraq, including those in most of the countries that have done so. Only one third, disproportionately in the poorest and most dictatorial countries, would like to see American values spread in their country. Says Doug Miller of GlobeScan, which conducted the BBC report: "President Bush has further isolated America from the world. Unless the administration changes its approach, it will continue to erode America's good name, and hence its ability to effectively influence world affairs." Former Brazilian president Jose Sarney expressed the sentiments of the 78 percent of his countrymen who see America as a threat: "Now that Bush has been re-elected, all I can say is, God bless the rest of the world."

The truth is that Americans are living in a dream world. Not only do others not share America's self-regard, they no longer aspire to emulate the country's social and economic achievements. The loss of faith in the American Dream goes beyond this swaggering administration and its war in Iraq. A President Kerry would have had to confront a similar disaffection, for it grows from the success of something America holds dear: the spread of democracy, free markets and international institutions—globalization, in a word.

Countries today have dozens of political, economic and social models to choose from. Anti-Americanism is especially virulent in Europe and Latin America, where countries have established their own distinctive ways—none made in America. Futurologist Jeremy Rifkin, in his recent book "The European Dream," hails an emerging European Union based on generous social welfare, cultural diversity and respect for international law—a model that's caught on quickly across the former nations of Eastern Europe and the Baltics. In Asia, the rise of autocratic capitalism in China or Singapore is as much a "model" for development as America's scandal-ridden corporate culture. "First we emulate," one Chinese businessman recently told the board of one U.S. multinational, "then we overtake."
....
Much in American law and society troubles the world these days. Nearly all countries reject the United States' right to bear arms as a quirky and dangerous anachronism. They abhor the death penalty and demand broader privacy protections. Above all, once most foreign systems reach a reasonable level of affluence, they follow the Europeans in treating the provision of adequate social welfare is a basic right. All this, says Bruce Ackerman at Yale University Law School, contributes to the growing sense that American law, once the world standard, has become "provincial." The United States' refusal to apply the Geneva Conventions to certain terrorist suspects, to ratify global human-rights treaties such as the innocuous Convention on the Rights of the Child or to endorse the International Criminal Court (coupled with the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo) only reinforces the conviction that America's Constitution and legal system are out of step with the rest of the world.
....
This is much of the secret of Britain's economic performance as well. Lorenzo Codogno, co-head of European economics at the Bank of America, believes the British, like Europeans elsewhere, "will try their own way to achieve a proper balance." Certainly they would never put up with the lack of social protections afforded in the American system. Europeans are aware that their systems provide better primary education, more job security and a more generous social net. They are willing to pay higher taxes and submit to regulation in order to bolster their quality of life. Americans work far longer hours than Europeans do, for instance. But they are not necessarily more productive—nor happier, buried as they are in household debt, without the time (or money) available to Europeans for vacation and international travel. George Monbiot, a British public intellectual, speaks for many when he says, "The American model has become an American nightmare rather than an American dream."

Just look at booming bri-tain. Instead of cutting social welfare, Tony Blair's Labour government has expanded it. According to London's Centre for Policy Studies, public spending in Britain represented 43 percent of GDP in 2003, a figure closer to the Eurozone average than to the American share of 35 percent. It's still on the rise—some 10 percent annually over the past three years—at the same time that social welfare is being reformed to deliver services more efficiently. The inspiration, says Giddens, comes not from America, but from social-democratic Sweden, where universal child care, education and health care have been proved to increase social mobility, opportunity and, ultimately, economic productivity. In the United States, inequality once seemed tolerable because America was the land of equal opportunity. But this is no longer so. Two decades ago, a U.S. CEO earned 39 times the average worker; today he pulls in 1,000 times as much. Cross-national studies show that America has recently become a relatively difficult country for poorer people to get ahead. Monbiot summarizes the scientific data: "In Sweden, you are three times more likely to rise out of the economic class into which you were born than you are in the U.S."

This is the legacy of Ronald Reagan: a poorer, sicker and less economically vigorous America which is safe for CEOs and hazardous for the rest of us.

The Price

Some See Risks as Republicans Revel in Power
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and RICHARD W. STEVENSON

Published: January 24, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - President Bush begins his second term with the Republican Party in its strongest position in over 50 years, but his clout is already being tested by Republican doubts about his domestic agenda, rising national unease about Iraq and the threat of second-term overreaching, officials in both parties say.

With this election producing a second-term Republican president and solid majorities in both the Senate and the House, Mr. Bush's party is more dominant than at any time since Herbert Hoover was elected in 1928. As Mr. Bush embarks on an explicit effort to put an imprint on politics and policy that will long outlast his presidency, his advisers are heady over what several described as an opportunity to make a long-lasting realignment in the nation's political balance of power.

But even those advisers said Mr. Bush had at most two years before he faced the ebb that historically saps the authority of a second-term incumbent, a relatively short time to sell his far-reaching agenda. And Republicans say his situation could be complicated by the absence of an obvious heir, opening the way for competing wings of the party to battle over details and tactics on the very issues Mr. Bush is embracing.

Richard Norton Smith, a presidential scholar who is director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, said the Republican Party had "come closer now than they've been at any time in my lifetime" to being the nation's majority party. But Mr. Smith said historical cycles over the past century suggested that its dominance might be coming to a close.

"The calendar alone tells you this conservative cycle is long in the tooth," he said. "Add to that the divisions, or latent divisions, that exist with your own coalition. Once Bush is removed from the scene, and once he becomes in effect a lame duck, all those tensions are there."

The White House has described the election results as a mandate, and in his Inaugural Address on Thursday, Mr. Bush laid out his vision in sweeping terms.

But some Republicans said they were worried about overconfidence, including Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who invoked his experience serving alongside Speaker Newt Gingrich when Republicans captured the House in 1994. "Hubris is deadly," Mr. Sanford said.

With W in control, hubris is also inevitable. The Republicans have chosen as their standard bearer a very small and mean (in every sense of the word) figure who stands for nothing other than political expediency. The phrase "hoist on their own petard" was crafted for situations such as this. Those 34 scandals (so far) will come home to roost. Hubris always brings nemesis.

The Monkey Problem

God and Darwin

Monday, January 24, 2005; Page A14

WITH THEIR SLICK Web sites, pseudo-academic conferences and savvy public relations, the proponents of "intelligent design" -- a "theory" that challenges the validity of Darwinian evolution -- are far more sophisticated than the creationists of yore. Rather than attempt to prove that the world was created in six days, they operate simply by casting doubt on evolution, largely using the time-honored argument that intelligent life could not have come about by a random natural process and must have been the work of a single creator. They do no experiments and do not publish in recognized scientific journals. Nevertheless, this new generation of anti-evolutionists, arguing that children have a "right to question" scientific truths, has had widespread success in undermining evolutionary theory.

Perhaps partly as a result, a startling 55 percent of Americans -- and 67 percent of those who voted for President Bush -- do not, according to a recent CBS poll, believe in evolution at all. According to a recent Gallup poll, about a third of Americans believe that the Bible is literally true. Some of these believers have persuaded politicians, school boards and parents across the country to question their children's textbooks. In states as diverse as Wisconsin, South Carolina, Kansas, Montana, Arkansas and Mississippi, school boards are arguing over whether to include "intelligent design" in their curriculums. Last week, in Pennsylvania's Dover School District, an administrator read a statement to ninth-grade biology students saying that evolution is not fact. Over the objections of ninth-grade science teachers and of parents who have filed suit, he offered "intelligent design" as an alternative. Also last week, a Georgia county school board voted to appeal a judge's decision to remove stickers describing evolution as a "theory, not a fact" from school textbooks. In both cases, the anti-evolutionists have been very careful in their choice of language, eschewing mentions of God or the Bible. Nevertheless, their intent was clear. As the lawsuit filed by Dover parents states, "intelligent design is neither scientific nor a theory in the scientific sense; it is an inherently religious argument or assertion that falls outside the realm of science." Discussion of religion in a history or philosophy class is legitimate and appropriate. To teach intelligent design as science in public schools is a clear violation of the principle of separation of church and state.

It also violates principles of common sense. In fact, the breadth and extent of the anti-evolutionary movement that has spread almost unnoticed across the country should force American politicians to think twice about how their public expressions of religious belief are beginning to affect education and science. The deeply religious nature of the United States should not be allowed to stand in the way of the thirst for knowledge or the pursuit of science. Once it does, it won't be long before the American scientific community -- which already has trouble finding enough young Americans to fill its graduate schools -- ceases to lead the world.

This won't buy much with the Christian evangelicals, but the Catholic church has never had a problem with evolution, and these are the folks that had trouble with Copernicus.

The WaPo editorial misses the point: the reason why things like these text-book wars are happening is because a concerted campaign by far right-wing Christian evangelicals began 30 years ago at the school board level. They figured out how to game the system by standing up candidates for local elections and worked their way up to the national level. The reason why the US appears to have swung to the right is because that's the only organized political movement in the country.

If the Left wants to start winning elections, it needs to organize a coherent political movement that knows how to use religious language.

In Brooklyn

A Bridge to Sell

Published: January 24, 2005

The president promises that under a private retirement scheme, anyone age 55 or older would continue to receive full Social Security benefits. What he repeatedly fails to mention is that privatization would require some $2 trillion in new borrowing over the next 10 years and an additional $4.5 trillion in the decade thereafter. That's on top of the trillions that need to be found to cover the costs of Medicare and Medicaid and - if the president gets his way - to make this decade's tax cuts permanent. It's foolhardy to assume that the government could continue to meet all of its obligations, including the payment of Social Security benefits, under such a mountain of debt.

All told, by 2030, when today's 55-year-olds turn 80, the national debt would be as big as the economy itself, according to a calculation by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that uses data from Social Security and the Congressional Budget Office. To compare, consider that in the last 50 years, national debt has equaled only 38 percent of the economy on average, and that percentage includes the tremendous overhang of debt from World War II.

Large and virtually permanent fiscal imbalances could create severe hardship. At the least, big and ongoing deficits erode living standards because they reduce the money available for investment in the economy. At worst, enormous and endless deficits could provoke a loss of investor confidence, leading to higher interest rates and inflation, lower stock and bond prices, less household wealth, less government spending and slower economic growth.

If Congress faced that kind of crisis, it's safe to assume that everything would be on the table, including Social Security retirement benefits. This would be especially true if the crisis was provoked by privatization. The reason: diverting a portion of payroll taxes into private accounts - the centerpiece of Mr. Bush's privatization scheme - would greatly accelerate the exhaustion of the Social Security trust fund, unless the government made huge transfusions of other tax revenue into the fund. It could be difficult to justify such transfers with an economy in dire straits. A dwindling trust fund, in turn, could create a political dynamic for benefit cuts that would be hard to resist.

Even if Congress managed to keep the commitment to continued funding of full Social Security benefits for today's retirement-age population, senior citizens could find that their other sources of retirement income, especially stocks and bonds, had taken a hit. Their adult children would probably not be able to provide a safety net. Indeed, a country in fiscal crisis is one in which adults are more likely to turn to their elderly parents for help.

Despite the risks to their own economic well-being in retirement, some older Americans might be willing to support Social Security privatization if it would ensure a stable retirement for their children and grandchildren. But it wouldn't. Privatization would require potentially debilitating borrowing up front, in exchange for a drastically reduced benefit later on, no matter how well, or poorly, private accounts performed. So there's no reason for senior citizens to support it and plenty of reasons to oppose it. Mr. Bush is wily, and wrong, when he tries to dismiss older Americans from the debate.

The Times can't quite bring itself to say that Bush is lying, that, with small tweaks, SS will be fine in perpetuity and that the whole "personal accounts" idea is both wicked and expensive.

But, since Congress isn't going to go along with this terrible idea, I guess The Times isn't afraid of retribution from the White House. You wonder why our press coverage is so bad? It's because bucking Karl Rove can cost a career and everybody in town knows it.

New Tech

Scrambling For a Slice Of Internet Phone Pie
Small Firms in Area Search for a Niche

By Yuki Noguchi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 24, 2005; Page E01

nvestors showed little interest when Richard M. Tworek started setting up Internet-based phone systems for businesses two years ago.

Now the company that Tworek founded, Qovia Inc., has $16.1 million in venture capital and 120 businesses use its software to make sure their Internet connections stay robust enough for calls to go through glitch-free. But last week the Frederick company laid off 16 of its 59 employees and retooled its business plan.

BroadSoft sells voice over Internet protocol providers desktop software that helps users program phone systems.

Like Qovia, most Washington area companies in the Internet phone business are relatively small and still searching for a secure and profitable niche in a fast-changing sector. They range from start-ups that provide behind-the-scenes support for the technology to alternative phone providers, such as Primus Telecommunications Group, that sell Internet calling plans directly to consumers.

Most are counting on predictions that the technology known as VoIP, or voice over Internet protocol, will take off this year. But a boom could cut both ways. The local companies could benefit from increased demand, but analysts say they also will face heightened competition from communications industry giants.

"Once the big guys come into the market, it's game over for the small guys," said Jon Arnold, a Toronto-based analyst with Frost & Sullivan, a market research firm. He predicted that a handful of carriers will dominate the consumer market. The situation may be less dire for software companies providing the technological underpinnings of VoIP systems, he said. But they will have to compete against big equipment-makers such as Cisco Systems Inc. and Nortel Networks Corp.as well as international rivals.

"There's only room for two or three vendors in each niche," Arnold said.

The number of consumers using VoIP is expected to grow to about 4 million by year-end from about 800,000 today, according to Frost & Sullivan. The growth may be driven by major communications companies such as cable giant Comcast Corp., which this month announced plans to offer Internet calling to as many as 20 million homes this year and another 20 million by the middle of 2006.

I'm looking for both a broadband provider and a new phone company. Anybody have experience to share?

Ask the Huns

McCain Expects Hearings On Defense Intelligence Unit
Pentagon Disputes Some of Post Report

Monday, January 24, 2005; Page A02

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the Senate Armed Services Committee will hold hearings on a Washington Post report that the Defense Department is reinterpreting U.S. law to give the secretary broad authority over clandestine operations abroad.

"I'm always sorry to read about things in The Washington Post when they affect a committee that I am a member of," McCain said.

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence T. DiRita issued a carefully worded statement yesterday that appears to dispute parts of the Post article.

"There is no unit that is directly reportable to the secretary of defense for clandestine operations as is described in the Washington Post," he said. In addition, DiRita said, "the Department is not attempting to 'bend' statutes to fit desired activities, as is suggested in this article."

At the same time, DiRita said: "It is accurate and should not be surprising that the Department of Defense is attempting to improve its long-standing human intelligence capability."

DiRita said the war on terror necessitates "a framework by which military forces and traditional human intelligence work more closely together and in greater numbers than they have in the past. These actions are being taken within existing statutory authorities to support traditional military operations and any assertion to the contrary is wrong."

The Strategic Support Branch, according to The Post, was designed to expand the Pentagon's use of "humint" or human intelligence operations, including the recruitment of spies and interrogation of prisoners. The recruited agents could include "notorious figures" whose ties to the United States would be embarrassing if revealed, according to a Pentagon memo.

I covered the initial WaPo story here yesterday. McCain may speculate that Rummy's broken no laws, but who can tell? Under this scheme, he's not accountable to anybody.

Every administration stretches the "separation of powers, checks and balances" part of the Constitution as far as they can, but I have to admit that the Bushies make Nixon look like an amateur. Someone should give them the words of advice offered by Attilla the Hun, "Pillage, then burn."

Wake Up Call

The US press finally wakes up.

Wary health officials plan for next flu pandemic
Avian strain has potential to mutate into killer of people

By Anne C. Mulkern
Denver Post Staff Writer

Atlanta - Fearing an outbreak of a new flu strain capable of killing millions, the nation's public health agency is quietly preparing a plan that proposes quarantines, school closures and rationing vaccine to counteract an epidemic.

Colorado health leaders are developing a similar strategy. Gov. Bill Owens has a draft quarantine order ready.

Even as they plan, health officials worry those steps won't halt a deadly bird flu if it mutates and starts spreading among people. An outbreak of avian flu in humans - if it happens - would kill millions worldwide.

Scientists say it's not a question of if but rather when a flu that people lack immunity to emerges, triggering a pandemic. A mild form of avian flu has already spread among a small group of people in Europe.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have asked states to formulate plans to deal with a pandemic and will meet in Denver next month to discuss vaccine development. Representatives from Western states are expected to attend. It is one of several regional meetings being held throughout the country.

"The situation is different than it's ever been before" with the avian flu, said Dr. Ken Gersham, chief of the communicable-disease program at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. "I think it is scary to people who know a lot about flu and what could happen."

It sounds like the plot of a disaster movie or hype about another impending catastrophe that never arrives. In fact, lethal avian flu may never infect people in the United States. But fears about an avian flu pandemic have experts worldwide issuing warnings and preparing for the worst.

Mutation a concern

Avian flu, which plagues birds in Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Pakistan, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, lacks the ability to spread from person to person. Of the 37 deaths that have occurred worldwide, most of those who died had direct contact with infected birds.
.

But influenza viruses mutate constantly, which is why people need vaccines each year to fend off the latest strain. The longer that avian flu persists in birds, the greater the likelihood it will mutate into a form that is contagious among people.

If that happens, "then you have a virus that essentially the vast majority of people have no protection against, but it transmits well in humans," said Lynette Brammer, an epidemiologist at the CDC in Atlanta. "That's when you get a pandemic."

The avian virus is particularly virulent, killing 73 percent of the people infected with it in the last year.

The World Health Organization estimates that in a "best- case scenario," avian flu spreading person to person would kill 2 million to 7 million worldwide and sicken tens of millions. Some experts put the potential death toll as high as 50 million, a number the WHO said is scientifically based but with different assumptions about infectivity and vaccine availability. That compares with the more typical flu strains, which in the United States kill an average of 36,000 people annually, most of them elderly.

Flu pandemics on average have occurred three to four times a century. The last one hit 35 years ago. The last severe one was in 1918.

"When you look at health threats, here is one that we essentially know is going to happen," Dr. Bruce Gellin, director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' vaccine program, said of a flu pandemic. "We don't know when it's going to happen. We don't know how severe it's going to happen."

Planning for such a pandemic began about two years ago.

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson told Gellin, a specialist in infectious disease, that a national pandemic plan was his "No. 1, 2 and 3 priorities." A draft was issued in August and is posted online. No date has been set for a finalized report.

Here are some things to think about: because of protective quarantines and actual cases of illness, essential services that we take for granted may not be available. Plan in advance to be inconvenienced, possibly for several weeks. Your bank may not be open and there may be no one to service the ATM, so get used to keeping a supply of cash at home. The networks that service credit cards may be down due to lack of staffing. Grocery stores may be closed.

You should plan for this the way you'd prepare for a major winter storm, extensive power outage or natural disaster, like a hurricane. It's hard to know how essential services might be affected, so plan as if you need to be completely self-sufficient for several weeks.

There may be civil unrest. If you own a business, plan for that. If you have access to a line of credit, make sure that it is open.

Order your nanomasks, and try to have a supply of oseltamavire on hand. Tamiflu will not help, so save your money.

The Denver Post story is a sign that the CDC's level of concern is beginning to ramp up. Your level of concern should ramp up, too.

Tell your friends and relatives about this story, because they sure aren't going to hear about it until we have case 0 in the US, at which time it is too late. Way, way too late.

Load of Whoosh

How can you tell when John Negroponte is lying? His lips are moving.

.S. Envoy Tries to Assure Iraqis of Security at Polls
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune

Published: January 23, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 -- A leader of the anti-American insurgency in Iraq threatened today that a '''bitter war''' would be waged against anyone taking part in the upcoming election, but the United States ambassador, John Negroponte, promised ''elaborate security'' for voters and predicted ''strong participation.''

While the warning from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an ally of Al Qaeda, underscored the risks of the coming week, Mr. Negroponte said that coalition and Iraqi forces had elaborate plans to protect election sites next Sunday so that in ``the preponderance of the country it will be safe for people to go and vote.''

Mr. Zarqawi and his allies are blamed for much of the violence ravaging parts of Iraq; today the group claimed the unconfirmed killing of Salem Jaafar al-Kanani, a leading member of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s party.

Bombings north of Baghdad killed 10 Iraqis, and insurgents elsewhere dynamited a voting center, a government building and a police station. An American soldier was fatally shot while patrolling in the northern city of Mosul, the United States military said.

There are fears that violence will only intensify in the final days before the elections next Sunday.

In an audio tape on the Internet, a man believed to be Mr. Zarqawi derided members of the Shiite majority for embracing the elections. Minority Sunnis, once a power base for Saddam Hussein, are expected largely to shun the vote, either through fear or from a sense that the outcome can only overwhelm their interests. Mr. Zarqawi said Sunnis should seek violently to derail the vote.

"We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all those who seek to enact it," he said.

But United States and Iraqi officials pledged their determination today to what they said would be a historic step in propelling the Iraqi people toward full autonomy, a constitutional democracy and an end to occupation.

Mr. Allawi said that his government would do all in its power to protect the more than 5,000 polling sites against "evil forces determined to hurt Iraq." Authorities plan to seal borders, close airports, limit traffic and impose curfews to reduce the chances of election-day attacks like those that have killed hundreds of politicians and security workers and thousands of others.

Mr. Allawi said that if his party emerges triumphant, it will be in no hurry to set a timetable for an American withdrawal. And Mr. Negroponte said that he did not expect any new governing party to ask for such an immediate pullout.

This is all bullshit. We don't have the horses, the ING doesn't have the horses. If any significant number of Iraqis show up to vote there will be desperate bloodshed, and for that reason I don't anticipate much turnout.

Defining Ignorance Down II

Greg Palast watched the oaf of office and says what everybody is thinking hasn't had the nerve to say:

But, dear Reader, there's one cold statistic Kerry voters must face. The fact that Republicans monkeyed with the votes in swing states doesn't wash away that big red stain: 59 million Americans marched to the polls and voted for George W. Bush.

When I looked today at the oaf of office, I could not shake the feeling that this election was an intelligence test that America flunked.

Defining Ignorance Down

Survey Finds Church-Going Americans Less Tolerant
Sat Jan 22, 2005 6:38 PM ET

By Michael Conlon

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Church-going Americans have grown increasingly intolerant in the past four years of politicians making compromises on such hot issues as abortion and gay rights, according to a survey released on Saturday.

At the same time, those polled said they were growing bolder about pushing their beliefs on others -- even at the risk of offending someone.

The trends could indicate that religion has become "more prominent in American discourse ... more salient," according to Ruth Wooden, president of Public Agenda, a nonpartisan research organization which released the survey.

It could also indicate "more polarized political thinking. There do not seem to be very many voices arguing for compromise today," she said in an interview. "It could be that more religious voices feel under siege, pinned against the wall by cultural developments. They may feel more emboldened as a result."

The November U.S. election saw voters in a number of states back gay marriage bans, and President Bush won re-election with heavy support from fellow religious conservatives.

The findings came from a telephone survey of 1,507 adults made in 2000 and a second similar survey of 1,004 adults done during the summer of 2004 that tracked the same issues. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Those surveyed were nearly all Christians, not by design but because the sample reflected the makeup of the population, the group said. A 2002 Pew Research Council survey found that 82 percent of the U.S. populace considered itself to be Christian, while 10 percent identified with no religious group.

On the question of whether elected officials should set their convictions aside to get results in government, 84 percent agreed in 2000. However, four years later that had dropped to 74 percent. There was a sharper decline on the same question among weekly church-goers from 82 percent in the first survey to 63 percent in the second.

Fascinating, isn't it, that religious attitudes are hardening even as church attendence drops. Wouldn't want to be held accountable for those beliefs, would we?

And then there was Stephen Prothero's article in the LAT a couple of weeks ago:

In Europe, religious education is the rule from the elementary grades on. So Austrians, Norwegians and the Irish can tell you about the Seven Deadly Sins or the Five Pillars of Islam. But, according to a 1997 poll, only one out of three U.S. citizens is able to name the most basic of Christian texts, the four Gospels, and 12% think Noah's wife was Joan of Arc. That paints a picture of a nation that believes God speaks in Scripture but that can't be bothered to read what he has to say.

U.S. Catholics, evangelicals and Jews have been lamenting for some time a crisis of religious literacy in their ranks. But the dangers of religious ignorance are by no means confined to those worried about catechizing their children or cultivating the next generation of clergy.

When Americans debated slavery, almost exclusively on the basis of the Bible, people of all races and classes could follow the debate. They could make sense of its references to the runaway slave in the New Testament book of Philemon and to the year of jubilee, when slaves could be freed, in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. Today it is a rare American who can engage with any sophistication in biblically inflected arguments about gay marriage, abortion or stem cell research.

Since 9/11, President Bush has been telling us that "Islam is a religion of peace," while evangelist Franklin Graham (Billy's son) has insisted otherwise. Who is right? Americans have no way to tell because they know virtually nothing about Islam. Such ignorance imperils our public life, putting citizens in the thrall of talking heads.

How did this happen? How did one of the most religious countries in the world become a nation of religious illiterates? Religious congregations are surely at fault. Churches and synagogues that once inculcated the "fourth R" are now telling the faithful stories "ripped from the headlines" rather than teaching them the Ten Commandments or parsing the Sermon on the Mount (which was delivered, as only one in three Americans can tell you, by Jesus). But most of the fault lies in our elementary and secondary schools.

In a majority opinion in a 1963 church-state case (Abington vs. Schempp), Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark wrote, "It might well be said that one's education is not complete without a study of comparative religion … and its relationship to the advance of civilization." If so, the education of nearly every public school student in the nation is woefully inadequate.

Because of misunderstandings about the 1st Amendment, religious studies are seldom taught in public schools. When they are, instruction typically begins only in high school and with teachers not trained in the subtle distinction between teaching religion (unconstitutional) and teaching about religion (essential).

Though state educational standards no longer ignore religion as they did a decade or so ago, coverage of religion in history and social science textbooks is spotty at best. According to Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va., "It is as if we got freedom of religion in 1791 and then we were free from religion after that."

Now that the religious right has triumphed over the secular left, every politician seems determined to get religion. They're all asking "What Would Jesus Do?" — about the war in Iraq, gay marriage, poverty and Social Security. And though the ACLU may rage, it is not un-American to bring religious reasoning into our public debates. In fact, that has been happening ever since George Washington put his hand on a Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. What is un-American is to give those debates over to televangelists of either the secular or the religious variety, to absent ourselves from the discussion by ignorance.

This is one of the things which has made me nuts in trying to talk with religious liberals about beliefs: they have a range of opinions which are founded on nothing at all but their own good opinions of themselves, rather than in any kind of actual knowledge about the subject under discussion.

Ya Gotta Read the Foreign Press

Cheney firm's £40m MoD deal

BRIAN BRADY WESTMINSTER EDITOR

THE MULTIBILLION-pound project to build Britain’s biggest ever warships will be placed under the control of controversial American military firm Halliburton, under an extraordinary deal to be announced this week.

The Ministry of Defence is expected to confirm that the controversial firm, closely linked to US vice-president Dick Cheney, will be installed to manage the construction of the two "super-carriers", in a move that will have far-reaching implications for Scottish shipbuilding.

But Scotland on Sunday understands that, in an unprecedented move, ministers will retain a "veto" over major decisions relating to the £4bn construction contract - in particular where the massive vessels will be assembled.

The unique demand effectively guarantees the future of up to 1,000 jobs at the Rosyth yard, which had been hoping to clinch the lucrative work of fitting the component parts of the ships together, after the modules have been produced at yards across the UK.

Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton, had been planning to assemble the 60,000-tonne ships at Nigg, on the north-east coast of Scotland, where it has an offshore oil platform yard.

But after a huge lobbying campaign from unions and MPs, and representations from Chancellor Gordon Brown - whose Dunfermline East constituency is next door to the Rosyth yard - Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon has ordered that the government must have the final say on where the finishing touches are made to the vessels, due to enter service in 2012 and 2015.

Spreading graft and corruption around the world since 1995.

Human Rights Watch

"The United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors."

G. W. Bush, 20 January, 2005

On One Night, Iraqi Turns From Friend to Foe

By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page A20

BAGHDAD -- The day after the soldiers came, Imaad ordered his mother to go through her refrigerator and pantry and throw out all the cheese that had been made outside of Iraq. He went around and collected any images of Westerners in the house, threw them in a pile and burned them until they were floating bits of ash. He struck his mother repeatedly and forbade her to watch foreign news or movie channels on their new television.

The Americans were "the devil," Imaad ranted.
....
On the night of Jan. 5, Imaad and his mother, Um Imaad -- both of whom declined to give their full names for fear of retribution -- were watching a movie in the living room. As in most other parts of the capital for the past two months, their Adhimiya neighborhood has electricity about two hours a day. So the generators outside were humming at about 9 that night, and the television was turned up so they could hear.

Imaad said they were startled by a loud banging at the door. He went quickly to open it. When he did, Imaad said, there were about a dozen U.S. soldiers standing with their guns pointed at his head.

Imaad and his mother said the soldiers rushed in, ordering them to sit together while they searched the house. "You look poor," Imaad recalled one of the soldiers saying. "Why?"

Imaad answered in English: "I have not been able to find a job, although I'm a graduate of the College of Arts." His heart was pounding, Imaad said. His mother, a chatty widow who adores her son, sat next to him, shaking.

The soldiers went to search his bedroom. He heard laughing, and then they called for him, he said. Imaad went to his room and saw that the soldiers had found several magazines he kept hidden from his mother. They had pictures of girls in swimsuits and erotic poses. Imaad said the soldiers spread the magazines on his bed and put his Koran in the middle.

"This is a good match," Imaad said one of the soldiers told him.

"It was a nightmare," he said. "I will never forget those bad soldiers when they put the Koran among the magazines."

Within 20 minutes, the soldiers left without arresting him or his mother. While the soldiers went next door to search his neighbor's house, Imaad began to slap his mother, he said. "The American people are devils," Um Imaad recalled her son repeating.

Whatever happened to that "hearts and minds" strategy?

The Blessings of Liberty

WHAT'S WORRYING IRAQI VOTERS

Despite the ever-present threat of a suicide bombing or US troops opening fire at random, security is not the main issue for Iraqi voters. They can avoid those dangers if they keep clear of military or police checkpoints, but everyone is affected by the endless shortages of everything from petrol to electricity.

Fuel: In the Jadriyah district of Baghdad, drivers sometimes sleep two nights running in their cars as they wait in a two-mile queue for petrol. Black market fuel is available, but it is often 30 times the normal price, heightening the anger of a country with the world's second-largest oil reserves.

Power: Electricity supply is worse than ever. At the end of last year, the last time for which there are official figures, only 845MW of electricity was available in Baghdad, compared with 2,500MW under Saddam Hussein.Iraqis largely blame the US for the collapse of infrastructure.

Water: Although water supplies remain erratic, this is less of a problem in winter than it is in summer. However, if water shortages this year are as bad as they were last year in the heat of summer, public fury is likely to erupt.

Communications: Mobile phones, banned by Saddam, were welcomed in Baghdad after the invasion. But by the end of last year they were often failing to work for days at a time because the company in charge had sold too many, and the equipment it installed was overburdened.

Heating and cooking: It is surprisingly cold at night during winter, and Iraqis try to keep warm by huddling next to paraffin heaters. But paraffin is in short supply, and has risen in price from 1,500 Iraqi dinars to 7,500 dinars a litre. The price of domestic gas for cooking has shot up even more steeply.

Reconstruction: In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, a decade ago, Iraq rapidly rebuilt its bridges and patched up power stations and refineries. Iraqis often contrast this with the dismal failure of the US and its Iraqi allies since 2003. Construction materials like cement are expensive. Cement plants can only operate part time because they lack electricity.

Riverbend wrote last night:

Bleak Eid...
It's the third day of Eid. Eid is the Islamic holiday and usually it’s a time for families to get together, eat, drink and celebrate. Not this Eid. This Eid is unbearable. We managed a feeble gathering on the first day and no one was in a celebratory mood. There have been several explosions- some far and some near but even those aren't as worrisome as the tension that seems to be growing on a daily basis.

It's amazing how as things get worse, you begin to require less and less. We have a saying for that in Iraq, "Ili yishoof il mawt, yirdha bil iskhooneh." Which means, "If you see death, you settle for a fever." We've given up on democracy, security and even electricity. Just bring back the water.

The USA: bringing freedom to the world since 2002.

His Dark Domain

Secret Unit Expands Rumsfeld's Domain
New Espionage Branch Delving Into CIA Territory

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page A01

The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.

Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places they declined to name. According to an early planning memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on "emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia." Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed.

The Strategic Support Branch was created to provide Rumsfeld with independent tools for the "full spectrum of humint operations," according to an internal account of its origin and mission. Human intelligence operations, a term used in counterpoint to technical means such as satellite photography, range from interrogation of prisoners and scouting of targets in wartime to the peacetime recruitment of foreign spies. A recent Pentagon memo states that recruited agents may include "notorious figures" whose links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed.

Perhaps the most significant shift is the Defense Department's bid to conduct surreptitious missions, in friendly and unfriendly states, when conventional war is a distant or unlikely prospect -- activities that have traditionally been the province of the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Senior Rumsfeld advisers said those missions are central to what they called the department's predominant role in combating terrorist threats.

The Pentagon has a vast bureaucracy devoted to gathering and analyzing intelligence, often in concert with the CIA, and news reports over more than a year have described Rumsfeld's drive for more and better human intelligence. But the creation of the espionage branch, the scope of its clandestine operations and the breadth of Rumsfeld's asserted legal authority have not been detailed publicly before. Two longtime members of the House Intelligence Committee, a Democrat and a Republican, said they knew no details before being interviewed for this article.

The CIA has congressional oversight for its black ops, the DoD does not. If that thought doesn't raise the hairs on the back of your neck....

What's going on here is that Rummy is running his own private army and private intel service. And we've been covering it for more than a year already without so much as a shred of interest by Congress or the MSM.

Posted by Melanie at 08:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

War Crimes

Army faces new claims over Iraq brutality

Lawyers weigh charges over nine fresh allegations as government faces demands for full public inquiry

Jamie Doward and Mark Townsend in Osnabrück
Sunday January 23, 2005
The Observer

The army faces a fresh series of serious allegations of abuse against its forces in Iraq, The Observer has learnt. The Ministry of Defence confirmed last night that army prosecution lawyers have completed investigations into nine separate incidents involving British soldiers serving in Iraq and are now actively considering bringing charges on the back of their inquiries.

Three of the cases concern incidents in which Iraqis were detained by British forces. Four involve the fatal shooting of Iraqis during military operations and two involve non-fatal injuries. A further 48 cases are still being investigated, while 77 cases have been examined and closed by army lawyers.

An MoD spokesman declined to give further details, but confirmed: 'Nine cases are now complete and the army prosecution authorities are examining them.'

The nine cases are in addition to the current court mar tial in Osnabrück, Germany, where three members of the Royal Fusiliers have been accused of abusing Iraqi civilians.

The revelation that more of the 9,200 soldiers serving in Iraq could face courts martial has prompted calls from human rights groups for a full public inquiry into the army's activities. They also want to know when - and to what extent - the government was aware of concerns about the abuse of Iraqis.

Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International UK, which last year raised concerns about the conduct of British troops with defence ministers, said only an independent investigation could reveal the true picture.

Referring to the court martial in Osnabrück, Allen said: 'What's really staggering is that these allegations would probably never have come to light had a soldier not taken some pictures into a high street developers' and the staff not called the police. Is that really the full extent of public scrutiny over the behaviour of our armed forces?

On Television, Torture Takes a Holiday

Frank Rich

ON the day that the defense rested in the military trial of Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, American television news had a much better story to tell: "The Trouble With Harry," as Brian Williams called it on NBC. The British prince had attended a fancy dress costume party in Wiltshire (theme: "native and colonial") wearing a uniform from Rommel's Afrika Korps complete with swastika armband. Even by the standards of this particular royal family, here was idiocy above and beyond the call of duty.

For those of us across the pond, it was heartening to feel morally superior to a world-class twit. But if you stood back for just a second and thought about what was happening in that courtroom in Fort Hood, Tex. - a task that could be accomplished only by reading newspapers, which provided the detailed coverage network TV didn't even attempt - you had to wonder if we had any more moral sense than Britain's widely reviled "clown prince." The lad had apparently managed to reach the age of 20 in blissful ignorance about World War II. Yet here we were in America, in the midst of a war that is going on right now, choosing to look the other way rather than confront the evil committed in our name in a prison we "liberated" from Saddam Hussein in Iraq. What happened in the Fort Hood courtroom this month was surely worthy of as much attention as Harry's re-enactment of "Springtime for Hitler": it was the latest installment in our government's cover up of war crimes.

But a not-so-funny thing happened to the Graner case on its way to trial. Since the early bombshells from Abu Ghraib last year, the torture story has all but vanished from television, even as there have been continued revelations in the major newspapers and magazines like The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and Vanity Fair. If a story isn't on TV in America, it doesn't exist in our culture.

The latest chapter unfolding in Texas during that pre-inaugural week in January was broadcast on the evening news almost exclusively in brief, mechanical summary, when it was broadcast at all. But it's not as if it lacked drama; it was "Judgment at Nuremberg" turned upside down. Specialist Graner's defense lawyer, Guy Womack, explained it this way in his closing courtroom statement: "In Nuremberg, it was the generals being prosecuted. We were going after the order-givers. Here the government is going after the order-takers." As T. R. Reid reported in The Washington Post, the trial's judge, Col. James L. Pohl of the Army, "refused to allow witnesses to discuss which officers were aware of events in cellblock One-Alpha, or what orders they had given." While Mr. Womack's client, the ringleader of the abuses seen in the Abu Ghraib photographs, deserved everything that was coming to him and then some, there have yet to be any criminal charges leveled against any of the prison's officers, let alone anyone higher up in the chain of command.

Nor are there likely to be any, given how little information about this story makes it to the truly mass commercial media and therefore to a public that, according to polls, disapproves of the prison abuses by a majority that hovers around 80 percent. What information does surface is usually so incomplete or perfunctorily presented that it leaves unchallenged the administration's line that, in President Bush's words, the story involves just "a few American troops" on the night shift.

The minimizing - and in some cases outright elimination - of Abu Ghraib and its aftermath from network news coverage is in part (but only in part) political. Fox News, needless to say, has trivialized the story from the get-go, as hallmarked by Bill O'Reilly's proud refusal to run the photos of Graner & Company after they first surfaced at CBS. (This is in keeping with the agenda of the entire Murdoch empire, whose flagship American paper, The New York Post, twice ran Prince Harry's Nazi costume as a Page 1 banner while relegating Specialist Graner's conviction a day later to the bottom of Page 9.) During the presidential campaign, John Kerry barely mentioned Abu Ghraib, giving TV another reason to let snarling dogs lie. Senator John Warner's initially vigilant Congressional hearings - which threatened to elevate the craggy Virginia Republican to a TV stardom akin to Sam Ervin's during Watergate - mysteriously petered out.

In a just world, Rummy would be in shackles in the dock at The Hague. In a just world, my senator, John Warner, would be taking a star turn in the press.

The Man of La Mancha

Bush Doctrine Is Expected to Get Chilly Reception

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page A01

When President Bush flew to Canada in his first international trip following his reelection, the White House portrayed it as the beginning of a fence-mending tour to bring allies back into the fold after a tense first term. But after Bush left, the Canadians were more furious than before.

They were stunned when Bush leaned across a table in a private meeting and lectured Prime Minister Paul Martin about opposing the U.S. missile defense system. And they were later taken aback by a speech filled with what they considered the same "old Bush" foreign policy pronouncements that opened the divide with the allies in the first place.

"If he's going to take that speech to Europe," said a top Canadian official who attended the meeting between Bush and Martin, "he's not going to get a good reception."

For all the talk of fresh diplomacy and rebuilding frayed alliances, Bush heads into his second term still demanding that the rest of the world meet him on his terms -- and now he has redefined those terms to an even more provocative degree with an inaugural address articulating a grand vision for spreading democracy and "ending tyranny" in "every nation." With his eye on history, Bush wants to change the world. The rest of the world is not necessarily so eager to be changed.

While administration officials have since tried to tamp down expectations of a radical shift in policy, the inaugural speech reflected a worldview dramatically at odds with that in many parts of Europe and the Middle East, where it has only confirmed the image of Bush as an American unilateralist pursuing his own agenda with messianic fervor.

To the neoconservative thinkers who have long sought a leader in the White House willing to champion American ideals abroad, Bush has the chance to be a transformative figure. The first-term efforts to build democratic institutions in Afghanistan and Iraq, they hope, will expand in the second term, though not necessarily through armed force.

"His importance as a world leader will turn out to be far larger than the sort of tactical issues that are widely debated and for which he is sometimes reviled," said Richard Perle, an influential former adviser to the Pentagon. "Put this in a historic perspective: He's already created profound change. All around the Middle East, they're talking about the issue of democracy. They're talking about his agenda. It's an extraordinary thing."

Yet many Democrats, as well as Republicans from the traditional school of U.S. foreign policy, see Bush heading down a treacherous road that will further unravel a half-century of international relationships. The rupture over Iraq, they fear, may presage a widening divide with the rest of the world over the next four years.

I have many years in the 12-step program. Doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result is considered, um, "madness." Add lies to madness and you've got yourself a front-row seat at an AA meeting.
==========
I am I, Don Quixote, the lord of La Mancha
My destiny calls and I go

Onward to glory I go.

Sweet Dreams are Made of This, Who am I to Disagree?

U.S. Attempts To Build Trust, Leaders in Iraq

By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page A01

MOSUL, Iraq -- A dozen U.S. and Iraqi military officers dropped in on the Mosul police chief last week. After arriving at his headquarters in their armored Humvees, the men crowded into the chief's office to discuss security for the Jan. 30 parliamentary elections.

An Iraqi special forces officer, Lt. Col. Adell Abbas, quickly took over. "I have everything I need to protect you," he assured the police chief.

[Somehow, this fails to make me think I'll be taking my next vacation in Iraq ed.

The police chief appeared doubtful. He looked pleadingly around the room at the Americans, the real power in Mosul. What would they do to protect him?

A Marine seated next to Abbas intervened. "Sir, Col. Adell and I are brothers," said Maj. Frank Shelton. "He has a picture of my daughter. I have a picture of his son. Anything we can do to assist you, that is our mission together."

Abbas, 39, is commander of the 23rd Battalion, 6th Brigade, Iraqi Intervention Force. Shelton, 35, is his senior American adviser. In addition to keeping a photo of Abbas's 4-year-old son, Mustafa, strapped to his left arm, Shelton sleeps five feet from Abbas, eats meals off the same plate and seldom leaves his side. With limited success, he has grown a mustache to resemble the facial hair worn by Abbas and his men. Both men were trained as military divers.

Their intense relationship is part of a changing U.S. strategy to find a way out of Iraq. After a string of battlefield failures by the nascent Iraqi security forces, the U.S. military has committed as many as 10,000 advisers to work directly with Iraqi units in the coming months. The goal is to develop quality leaders who can prevent the units from falling apart under attack and ultimately assume responsibility for Iraq's security.

BTW, Bronfenbrenner's statistics in The New Republic piece quoted above are extremely conservative. Attempts to threaten and fire organizers happen more than 75% of the time.

B&E;

Vital Files Exposed In GMU Hacking

By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 11, 2005; Page B01

A computer hacker apparently broke into a George Mason University database containing student and employee Social Security numbers, leaving 32,000 people uncertain whether their finances or identities might be compromised.

University spokesman Daniel Walsch said yesterday that the intrusion was discovered Jan. 3 by the department that manages campus computer systems. The database also included names, school identification numbers and photographs.

The university quickly notified employees and students, Walsch said, adding that no one has reported that any personal information was used inappropriately.

Although the George Mason database did not include financial information, the university recommended that students and employees notify their banks and credit card providers to be on the alert for suspicious activity on their accounts.

The break-in is the latest in a spate of hacking directed at universities, which often maintain a rich store of personal data.

In the past year, systems at the University of Georgia, the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of California at Berkeley were attacked by hackers. The California breach resulted in the exposure of 1.4 million Social Security numbers.

High-profile break-ins also have occurred at financial institutions and other companies.

Walsch said the data were housed on computers running Microsoft Windows systems. He said that campus police are leading the investigation but that the probe would likely include other law enforcement agencies and technical experts.

Just a reminder. The stuff that Charles and I tell you about is for a reason.

Don't Touch That

In GOP, Resistance On Social Security
Bush Plan Raises Fear of Voter Anger

By Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 11, 2005; Page A01

Many Republicans are expressing reservations about the political wisdom of President Bush's vision for restructuring Social Security, as the White House today intensifies its campaign to restructure the entitlement program for the retired and disabled.

Bush, who relishes challenging the conventional wisdoms of Washington, has privately counseled Republicans that partially privatizing Social Security will be a boon for the GOP and has urged skeptics to hold fire until he builds a public case for change. But several influential Republicans are warning that Bush's plan could backfire on the party in next year's elections, especially if the plan includes cuts in benefits.

Most alarming to White House officials, some congressional Republicans are panning the president's plan -- even before it is unveiled. "Why stir up a political hornet's nest . . . when there is no urgency?" said Rep. Rob Simmons (Conn.), who represents a competitive district. "When does the program go belly up? 2042. I will be dead by then."

Simmons said there is no way he will support Bush's idea of allowing younger Americans to divert some of their payroll taxes into private accounts, especially when there are more pressing needs, such as shoring up Medicare and providing armor to U.S. troops in Iraq.

Rep. Jack Kingston (Ga.), a member of the GOP leadership, said 15 to 20 House Republicans agree with Simmons, although others say the number is closer to 40. "Just convincing our guys not to be timid is going to be a big struggle," he said. "It's going to take a lot of convincing," which he said can be done.

"The politics of this are brutal," one senior GOP leadership aide said, adding that the White House has yet to convince most House members that the "third rail" of American politics is somehow safe.

Outside Congress, several party activists are sounding similar alarms after word spread last week that Bush is planning to reduce future benefits as part of the restructuring. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) is warning that Republicans could lose their 10-year House majority if the White House follows through with that proposal.

William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, is challenging the president's assertions that Social Security is in crisis and that Republicans will be rewarded for fixing it. Republicans are privately "bewildered why this is such a White House priority," he said. "I am a skeptic politically and a little bit substantively."

With all but a few congressional Democrats opposed to Bush's plan for private Social Security accounts, the president's ability to win over these GOP skeptics will determine whether he can accomplish his top domestic priority for the second term, White House and congressional officials said.

"This is the toughest political fight the president has ever picked," Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute said. "On the other hand, the president has never lost a fight he has wanted to win." For decades, Republicans have lost congressional votes and elections because Democrats accused them of conspiring to gut Social Security, the nearly 70-year-old program that provides the retired, the disabled and others a monthly check. For many, especially seniors, Social Security is their primary income for housing, food and insurance. Democrats' accusations often proved deadly to Republicans because seniors vote in larger percentages than younger voters.

The beginning of the end. There is a reason why sensible politicians never touch the "third rail."

Now What?

Time Is a Weapon

By David Ignatius
Tuesday, January 11, 2005; Page A15

Is there an alternative strategy that would serve the interests of the United States, Iraq and regional allies? Here are some thoughts, gathered from recent discussions with coalition military and intelligence officers:

• Reduce the U.S. target. Iraq's best hope for avoiding a civil war may be the fact that nearly all Iraqis are united in wanting the U.S. occupation to end -- and are reaching out to find some common ground. A source close to Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani told the Arabic daily Al Hayat last weekend: "The representation of our Sunni brethren in the coming government must be effective, regardless of the results of the elections." He added that a new government "might demand that the occupying powers leave Iraq." Similarly, the leading Sunni clerical organization, the Association of Muslim Scholars, told Al Hayat that it would accept a Shiite government as long as it negotiated a firm deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Even if such a Shiite-Sunni alliance had an anti-American tone, it would be a glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak landscape.

• Live with de facto partition. For all of the difficulties in the war, much of northern and southern Iraq is stable today. Right now, the United States can be pumping billions of dollars in unspent reconstruction money into any part of the country that's able make good use of it. It may take years to end the chaos in central Iraq, but that shouldn't stop progress elsewhere.

• Make it deadly to be an insurgent. If a fledging agreement can be reached between Shiite and Sunni religious leaders on a formula for self-government, the Iraqi authorities must be ruthless in destroying opposition to that accord. Insurgents must wake up each morning afraid that they will die. This sort of dirty war isn't one I would like to see American forces fighting; it's one for Iraqi special forces. It will be a brutal fight, but it's the same one authorities in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Syria must fight every day against jihadists there. Somehow, the psychology of intimidation in Iraq has to be reversed, so that it's the insurgents who fear for their lives.

This is a moment for searching questions about the Iraq mission -- but not yet for final answers. The worst outcome would be a panicky rush to decision. What's needed is clear analysis -- without the false optimism too often heard from the Bush administration or the false pessimism of its critics. Keeping faith with the Iraqi people is a moral obligation for the United States. How best to do that should be a subject of national debate -- and America should take the time to get it right.

National debate? We haven't yet woken up to the fact that we've got a hot war on our hands.

The Winning Party

U.S. Tells D.C. to Pay Inaugural Expenses
Other Security Projects Would Lose $11.9 Million

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 11, 2005; Page A01

D.C. officials said yesterday that the Bush administration is refusing to reimburse the District for most of the costs associated with next week's inauguration, breaking with precedent and forcing the city to divert $11.9 million from homeland security projects.

Federal officials have told the District that it should cover the expenses by using some of the $240 million in federal homeland security grants it has received in the past three years -- money awarded to the city because it is among the places at highest risk of a terrorist attack.

But that grant money is earmarked for other security needs, Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) said in a Dec. 27 letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Joshua B. Bolten and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Williams's office released the letter yesterday.

Williams estimated that the city's costs for the inauguration will total $17.3 million, most of it related to security. City officials said they can use an unspent $5.4 million from an annual federal fund that reimburses the District for costs incurred because of its status as the capital. But that leaves $11.9 million not covered, they said.

"We want to make this the best possible event, but not at the expense of D.C. taxpayers and other homeland security priorities," said Gregory M. McCarthy, the mayor's deputy chief of staff. "This is the first time there hasn't been a direct appropriation for the inauguration."

A spokesman for Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, which oversees the District, agreed with the mayor's stance. He called the Bush administration's position "simply not acceptable."

"It's an unfunded mandate of the most odious kind. How can the District be asked to take funds from important homeland security projects to pay for this instead?" said Davis spokesman David Marin.

The region has earmarked federal homeland security funds for such priorities as increasing hospital capacity, equipping firefighters with protective gear and building transit system command centers.

OMB spokesman Chad Kolton said no additional appropriation is needed for the inauguration.

"We think that an appropriate balance of money from [the annual reimbursement] fund and from homeland security grants is the most effective way to cover the additional cost the city incurs," Kolton said. "We recognize the city has a special burden to bear for many of these events. . . . That's expressly why in the post-9/11 era we are providing additional resources."

The $17.3 million the city expects to spend on this inauguration marks a sharp increase from the $8 million it incurred for Bush's first.

Ah, empire is expensive and you can't do coronations on the cheap.

New News

Bumpers,

I hope you'll forgive me if I call it an early night. The events of the last week have caught up with me and I'm exhausted. I need to take the night off.

Just so you know, it's not all gloom and doom. I've fallen in love in a way that I didn't think was possible for a cynical old broad like me. But that turns out to be work, emotional work, too, and I'm depleted as hell this evening.

Mr. Nelson and I are many miles apart, so figuring out how we are going to manage all this is in the early stages. I don't have the money for the gas to Tennessee and his business has him too tied up to join me in DC.

If any of you want to help me out, it will be much appreciated. Yes, this is an Internet relationship, and it hasn't always gone smoothly. There have been plenty of bumps in the road, but we think we are working on a new thing, after months of trying and failing. I seem to remember plenty of here-and-now relationships with the same feature.

In the interest of full disclosure, as it were. Now, I'm going to sit for a long while in a bubblebath, the last refuge of the truly perplexed.

When you don't know what to do or are really confused, take a hot bath. It really helps.

FYI

Worth a Pound of Cure
Catching the flu--the right way
By The Editors

A global influenza pandemic is closer than at any time in a generation. Klaus Stöhr, head of flu surveillance at the World Health Organization, made that uncharacteristically dramatic declaration back in November, before convening an emergency summit of vaccine manufacturers and national health agency officials. The reason was the escalating avian influenza crisis in 10 Asian countries, which poses a direct threat to human health.

Start-up costs would equal the price of the two million emergency H5N1 vaccine doses the Department of Health and Human Services ordered in September. The money would be well spent for an ounce of prevention against future flu pandemics.

Declare Victory and Leave

Hot Topic: How U.S. Might Disengage in Iraq
By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT

One possibility quietly discussed inside the administration is whether the new Iraqi government might ask the United States forces to begin to leave - what one senior State Department official calls "the Philippine option," a reference to when the Philippines asked American forces to pull out a decade ago.

Few officials will talk publicly about that possibility. But in a speech on Oct. 8, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, who had just completed a tour as commander of all marines in Iraq, said, "I believe there will be elections in Iraq in January, and I suspect very shortly afterward you will start to see a reduction in U.S. forces - not because U.S. planners will seek it, rather because the Iraqis will demand it."

General Conway, who is now the director of operations for the military's Joint Staff, was traveling this weekend, and it could not be determined if he still stood by his comments.

Even if the new government wants the American forces to remain, some officials say there is a growing undercurrent of talk about whether to press the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own defense by giving them a rough timetable for gradual American withdrawal.

"It's clear to everyone that this has to become an Iraqi show, and it has to happen this year," a senior administration official said.

Military officers say actual security conditions, not schedules, will dictate any American troop reductions beyond a temporary increase of 12,000 troops for election security that is to end by early March.

"It's truly hard to say what anyone might regard as a realistic date," one general in Iraq said in an e-mail interview on Saturday.

Even as military planners at the Pentagon and in the Middle East draft possible withdrawal schedules, other Pentagon officials and retired officers are projecting long American troop commitments in Iraq.

Army officials here are still drawing up plans to sustain future rotations of troops at today's levels, plans that can be adapted, they said.

Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who commanded the invasion of Iraq, said on the NBC News program "Today" on Dec. 9: "One has to think about the numbers. I think we will be engaged with our military in Iraq for, perhaps, 3, 5, perhaps 10 years."

Here is a link to last month's review of Army Reserve readiness.

We have to get out to try to repair the Army.

Sick Call

Call in sick -- please
# Many companies are actively discouraging unwell employees from coming to work.

By Melissa Healy, Times Staff Writer

Make no mistake about it, however: This last workplace edict comes not out of a sudden Ebenezer Scrooge-like conversion of bosses everywhere. They're scared: not of the flu itself — with its high fevers and aching muscles — but of an unvaccinated workforce decimated by it, causing missed deadlines, blown production runs and shoddy work. Garden-variety viruses are bad enough, but the flu packs a punch that can last a week or more.

This past fall, 60% of the large employers polled by the Society for Human Resources Management said they were planning to offer flu shots or sponsor flu vaccine clinics for their employees this year. During last year's flu season, widespread efforts like these helped push flu inoculation levels among healthy Americans to historic levels — nearly one in four healthy adults younger than 65 got the shot.

But this year, virtually all such plans were scrubbed after government regulators condemned roughly half the nation's projected supply of flu vaccine because of contamination at Chiron Corp.'s British manufacturing plant. While 27 million doses were quickly set aside for babies, the elderly and those with chronic medical conditions, healthy workers have faced the flu season armed with little more than hand sanitizer and a heightened wariness of sick people they encounter in their daily rounds.

In Manhattan, where flu season has begun in earnest, the denizens of high finance are on guard for sick co-workers as never before. In trading pits where large numbers of salespeople share a common bank of phones, frenzied traders taking incoming calls no longer pick up the nearest handset, says Timothy Pierotti, a portfolio manager at Victoire Finance Capital on Wall Street.

Rather than risk exposure to their fellow traders' germs, most workers will expend precious seconds sprinting back to use their own phone. Hand sanitizers — cantaloupe scented is the local favorite — have become as common a desk accessory on Wall Street as a Palm Pilot.

And in spite of much evidence that influenza is circulating, nobody — nobody, says Pierotti — will admit to having it, for fear of being banned from the conference rooms, trading floors and after-hours watering holes where money is made and clients are nurtured.

If this year's influenza becomes the H5N1, we will see legally mandated quarentines put in place.

Another Hack

I've been telling you for months: switch to Mozilla.

Exploit code attacks unpatched IE bug
By John Leyden
Published Monday 10th January 2005 12:08 GMT

Code which exploits a vulnerability in the HTML Help control of Internet Explorer has been released onto the net. Secunia has upgraded the vulnerability, uncovered in October 2004, to "extremely critical". Even users who have upgraded to Windows XP SP2 with all available patches are affected, the security reporting firm warns.

Secunia has published an online test for the vulnerability here. ®

Human Nature

Via MJ at Holy Weblog:

Tsunami can’t wash this away: hatred for Dalits
In Ground Zero, Dalits thrown out of relief camps, cut out of food, water supplies, toilets, NGOs say they will start separate facilities
JANYALA SREENIVAS
Posted online: Friday, January 07, 2005 at 0058 hours IST

NAGAPATTINAM, JANUARY 6: There's something even an earthquake measuring 9 on the Richter scale and a tsunami that kills over 1 lakh people can’t crack: the walls between caste.

That’s why at Ground Zero in Nagapattinam, Murugeshan and his family of four have been living on the streets in Nambiarnagar. That’s why like 31 other families, they have been thrown out of relief camps. That’s why they are hounded out of schools they have sneaked into, they are pushed to the rear of food and water lines, given leftovers, not allowed to use toilets or even drink water provided by a UN agency. That’s why some NGOs are setting up separate facilities for them. Because they are all Dalits.

They are survivors from 63 damaged villages—30 of them flattened—all marooned in their own islands, facing the brunt of a majority of fishermen who are from the Meenavar community—listed in official records as Most Backward Class (MBC)—for whom Dalits are still untouchable.

The Indian Express toured the camps to find an old story of caste hatred being replayed in camp after camp:

• In the GVR Marriage Hall Relief Camp, Dalits cannot drink water from tanks put up by UNICEF. The Meenavars say they ‘‘pollute’’ the water.

• In the Nallukadai Street Relief Camp, a Meenavar Thalaivar, or leader, grabbed all cartons of glucose biscuits delivered by a Coimbatore NGO. The Dalits were told: these are not for you.

• At Puttur Relief Camp, the Meenavars have hoarded family relief kits, rice packets, new clothes and other relief material. When the Dalits asked for some, they paid a heavy price—they had to spend the night on the road.

• At the Neelayadatchi Temple Camp, Dalits are not allowed inside the temple, especially when rice and cash doles are being handed out.

• Dalits from three villages taking shelter at Ganapati cinema hall in Tharambagadi are thrown out every night because the Meenavar fisherwomen say they did not ‘‘feel safe’’ falling sleep with Dalits around.

• So 32 ostracised Dalit families took shelter in the GRM girls’ school in Thanjavur. But four days ago, even the school asked them to vacate saying it was due to re-open.

Those doing the discriminating brush all this aside. Says Chellayya, a Meenavar fisherman at a Tharambagadi camp: ‘‘These Dalits have been playing mischief, going back to the villages and looting houses. That’s why we don’t want them around here.’’

To which Dalit activist K Darpaya says: ‘‘What’s left in the houses for Dalits to take? And where will they keep the loot even if we assume they have taken something? In the relief camps? On the road side?’’

There’s an irony here. For, the district administration and relief agencies have to depend on the strong network of Meenavar fishermen to disburse aid and relief. But so rampant has the discrimination become that relief in-charge for Nagapattinam district Shantasheela Nayar, Secretary, Rural Development, is deputing District Adi Dravidar Welfare Officers to relief camps.

In anthropology and sociology there is a process known as liminality, the experience of having the the artificial barriers we construct between ourselves and others fall away. It often happens in the moments directly following some sort of tragedy. For example, you might see it in the way that strangers care for each other after some kind of accident or a fire. It is a fragile thing and doesn't last long.

Blue Skies, Smilin' at Me

The Flying Dinosaurs

No industry has done a better job of gaming the bankruptcy system. For carriers like US Airways and United, bankruptcy seems less a safe harbor from creditors in which to reorganize than an ongoing part of their business plan. Flying under bankruptcy, as five airlines do, provides an unfair advantage over competitors, a license to continue losing money without facing the consequences. Worst of all, excessive reliance on this life support has stymied overall development of the industry and slowed growth of a new generation of healthy, low-cost airlines.

There is something about the airline business that turns members of Congress from both parties into hopeless socialists, unwilling to allow the market to allocate resources — in this case the skies, planes and those airport gates — to their most efficient use. Members of Congress care deeply about airlines, even beyond saving jobs in a given district, because they offer the means of escape from Washington, not to mention sizable frequent-flier awards.

The Bush administration deserves credit for resisting congressional pressure, including from House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), to grant airlines more aid on the bogus theory that their ongoing woes stem from the Sept. 11 attacks. But there is still far too much interference with the free market in the business, as exemplified by the government's refusal in 2001 to allow a distress merger between United and US Airways. Worse, Congress has refused to lift antiquated limits on foreign ownership of U.S.-based carriers, which has needlessly shut out investment capital and competition.

Without Washington's meddling, development of the multi-tiered industry that has so benefited consumers would accelerate. By multiple tiers, we mean a business in which not every airline strives to be all things to all people.

The older carriers' business model and labor costs were predicated on the notion that you can be simultaneously Neiman Marcus and Wal-Mart. And they would charge Neiman Marcus fares for Wal-Mart service if you deigned to fly on short notice, or chose not to be stranded where you didn't want to be over a Saturday night.

A multi-tiered industry would have fewer global and national carriers engaged in more meaningful competition, and more regional, lower-cost niche players. As the first of a new breed, Southwest Airlines — an enterprise that has saved U.S. households untold billions — succeeded against the odds, then beyond its expectations.

Southwest and newer successful low-cost carriers like JetBlue and AirTran now carry nearly a third of domestic passengers. Their strength is reinforced by the Internet, which robbed carriers of their pricing power and shifted it to consumers.

Delta's move to cap last-minute fares and do away with Saturday-night-stay requirements is a recognition that it's a new world out there for fliers, one that no one in Washington should oppose.

Cool. There's a place I'd like to go right now.

Fat, Dumb, Happy

For the Record on Social Security

Published: January 10, 2005

At a recent press conference, Mr. Bush exaggerated the timing of the system's shortfall by saying that Social Security would cross the "line into red" in 2018. According to Congress's budget agency, the system comes up short in 2052; according to the system's trustees, the date is 2042. The year 2018 is when the system's trustees expect they will have to begin dipping into the Social Security trust fund to pay full benefits. If you had a trust fund to pay your bills when your income fell short, would you consider yourself insolvent?

In suggesting that 2018 is doomsyear, the president is reinforcing a false impression that the trust fund is a worthless pile of I.O.U.'s - as detractors of Social Security so often claim. The facts are different: since 1983, payroll taxes have exceeded benefits, with the excess tax revenue invested in interest-bearing Treasury securities. (An alternative would be to, say, put the money in a mattress.) That accumulating interest and the securities themselves make up the Social Security trust fund. If the trust fund's Treasury securities are worthless, someone better tell investors throughout the world, who currently hold $4.3 trillion in Treasury debt that carries the exact same government obligation to pay as the trust fund securities. The president is irresponsible to even imply that the United States might not honor its debt obligations.

Mr. Bush's reason for ignoring the far more pressing problem of Medicare while he pursues Social Security privatization is especially tortured. Over the next 75 years, the mismatch between revenues and Medicare benefits for doctors' care and prescription drugs is 3.5 to 6 times as much as the shortfall in Social Security, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The Medicare hospital trust fund mismatch is two to three times as big. Asked by a reporter last month why he wouldn't tackle Medicare first, Mr. Bush said that his administration had already taken on Medicare by pushing through the $500 billion-plus prescription drug benefit. Drug coverage, he said, would save money for Medicare by paying for medicine that would prevent the need for expensive heart surgery. "I recognize some of the actuaries haven't come to that conclusion yet," he said. "But the logic is irrefutable."

Logic? That thinking is wishful to the point of being magical. Medicare is not going to fix itself any more than tax cuts will pay for themselves. And Social Security is not a crisis for which enormous borrowing, huge benefit cuts and risky private accounts are a solution. Rather, it's a financial problem of manageable proportions, solvable without new borrowing by a combination of modest benefit cuts and tax increases that could be distributed fairly and phased in over several decades, while guaranteeing a basic level of inflation-proof income for life.

It appears that the president and his aides are trying to sow ignorance to gain support for their flawed privatization agenda. Lawmakers, policy makers and the American people have to let the administration know that they know better.

Funny, I don't recall hearing this on the Sabbath Gasbags yesterday.

Now YOu See It

Internal US poll shows Sunnis not likely to vote in Iraq election

Thu Jan 6, 3:58 PM ET

BAGHDAD (AFP) - The preliminary findings of a new internal US State Department poll on Iraq obtained by AFP shows only 32 percent of Sunni Muslims are "very likely" to vote in landmark national elections this month and only 12 percent consider the event legitimate.

The survey, conducted from December 12-26 by the State Department's Bureau of Research and Intelligence (INR), revealed major concern among Sunnis about the security situation in Iraq, with 88 percent saying the threat of violence would keep them away from voting centres.

The poll, which has not been released publicly, found three-quarters of Iraq's influential Shiite majority, who make up 60 percent of the country, would boycott elections if called upon to do so by a respected religious leader.

A US official said the dismal findings about the Sunnis were "not surprising. It's what we expected."

But the official called the overall results "encouraging" and predicted a high voter turnout. He also said the US government would continue to work to get out the Sunni vote.

The survey, which polled Sunni areas like Baquba and Tikrit as well as mixed cities like Baghdad and Kirkuk and southern Shiite cities, found that only "32 percent of Sunni(s) versus 87 percent of Shiite(s) say it is very likely they will personally vote."

Iraq's Sunnis ruled Iraq for most of its modern history until Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was toppled by the Americans in 2003.

The US and Iraqi government have laboured furiously to ensure Sunnis, who have fueled the country's deadly insurgency, show up at the polls. But the latest results indicated they have not made enough headway.

The State Department survey noted that only 50 percent of Sunnis, compared to 93 percent of the Shiites polled, "say it is very important for Iraqis in their community to personally take part in elections."

Even if Sunnis want to vote, the danger of attacks by insurgents could very well keep them from heading to the voting booth.

"Sixty one percent of Arab Sunnis are very concerned about their family's safety versus 24 percent of Shiites," the poll said.

The poll also found "88 percent of Sunni(s) and 38 percent of Shiite(s) would stay home if there are threats of violence against polling stations."

Asked if they thought the vote would "be completely free and fair" 52 percent of Arab Shiites answered yes, while only 12 percent of Sunnis gave a positive answer. In comparison, 37 percent of Sunnis and just five percent of Shiites said the vote would "not be free and fair."

Meanwhile, most Shiites, who have overwhelmingly backed the election, said they would skip the vote if called to do so by a religious leader they trusted.

Oh, yeah, it will be so legitimate. The civil war to come won't be covered by CNN, so it doesn't matter.

UPDATE:

And this will really help:

Party leader assassinated in Iraq

Baghdad, Iraq, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- The manager of the Iraqi National Accord party, headed by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, was assassinated Sunday near his home in Baghdad.

Sources close to the party said masked gunmen tailed the car of General Jassem al-Obaidi, who was accompanied by his daughter, and riddled him with bullets.

They said his daughter, who was on her way to school, was seriously injured and was reported in critical condition in a Baghdad hospital.

The assassination of al-Obaidi comes three weeks before the general elections and is part of a series of assassinations in Iraq that has killed hundreds of political, security and military officials.

Armed men Saturday abducted Ali Ghaleb, the mayor of the northern Salaheddine province, and Qahtan Hammadi, an aide to the province's governor, in southern Baghdad.

Iraqi security sources said the authorities were still searching for their whereabouts.

Truth

The Scent of Fear
By BOB HERBERT

Published: January 10, 2005

Mr. Bush's so-called pre-emptive war, which has already cost so many lives, is being enveloped by the foul and unmistakable odor of failure. That's why the Pentagon is dispatching a retired four-star general, Gary Luck, to Iraq to assess the entire wretched operation. The hope in Washington is that he will pull a rabbit out of a hat. His mission is to review the military's entire Iraq policy, and do it quickly.

I hope, as he is touring the regions in which the U.S. is still using conventional tactics against a guerrilla foe, that he keeps in mind how difficult it is to defeat local insurgencies, and other indigenous forces, as exemplified by such widely varying historical examples as the French experiences in Indochina and Algeria, the American experience in Vietnam, the Israeli experience in Lebanon, and so on.

But even the fortuitously named General Luck will be helpless to straighten anything out in time for the Iraqi elections. The commander of American ground forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, made it clear last week that significant areas of four major provinces, which together contain nearly half the population of the entire country, are not safe enough for people to vote.

"Today I would not be in much shape to hold elections in those provinces," said General Metz.

With the war draining the military of the troops needed for commitments worldwide, the Pentagon is being forced to take extraordinary steps to maintain adequate troop strength. A temporary increase of 30,000 soldiers for the Army, already approved by Congress, will most likely be made permanent. The Pentagon is also considering plans to further change the rules about mobilizing members of the National Guard and Reserve. Right now they cannot be called up for more than 24 months of active service. That limit would be scrapped, which would permit the Army to call them up as frequently as required.

That's not a back-door draft. It's a brutal, in-your-face draft that's unfairly limited to a small segment of the population. It would make a mockery of the idea of an all-volunteer Army.

Something's got to give. The nation's locked in a war that's going badly. The military is strained to the breaking point. And it's looking more and more like the amateur hour in the places that are supposed to provide leadership in perilous times - the Pentagon and the White House.

He only comes around twice a week.

Does He Really Believe This Stuff?

Defining Victory Down
By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: January 9, 2005

WASHINGTON

The president's still got a paper bag over his head, claiming that the daily horrors out of Iraq reflect just a few soreheads standing in the way of a glorious democracy, even though his commander of ground forces there concedes that the areas where more than half of Iraqis live are not secure enough for them to vote - an acknowledgment that the insurgency is resilient and growing. It's like saying Montana and North Dakota are safe to vote, but New York, Philadelphia and L.A. are not. What's a little disenfranchisement among friends?

"I know it's hard, but it's hard for a reason," Mr. Bush said on Friday, a day after seven G.I.'s and two marines died. "And the reason it's hard is because there are a handful of folks who fear freedom." If it's just a handful, how come it's so hard?

Then the president added: "And I look at the elections as a - as a - you know, as a - as - as a historical marker for our Iraq policy."

Well, that's clear. Mr. Bush is huddled in his bubble, but he's in a pickle. The administration that had no plan for what to do with Iraq when it got it, now has no plan for getting out.

The mood in Washington about our misadventure seemed to grow darker last week, maybe because lawmakers were back after visiting with their increasingly worried constituents and - even more alarming - visiting Iraq, where you still can't drive from the Baghdad airport to the Green Zone without fearing for your life.

"It's going to be ugly," Joe Biden told Charlie Rose about the election.

The arrogant Bush war council never admits a mistake. Paul Wolfowitz, a walking mistake, said on Friday he's been asked to remain in the administration. But the "idealists," as the myopic dunderheads think of themselves, are obviously worried enough, now that Mr. Bush is safely re-elected, to let a little reality seep in. Rummy tapped a respected retired four-star general to go to Iraq this week for an open-ended review of the entire military meshugas.

Mr. Wolfowitz, who devised the debacle in Iraq, is kept on, while Brent Scowcroft, Poppy Bush's lieutenant who warned Junior not to go into Iraq, is pushed out as chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. That's the backward nature of this beast: Deceive, you're golden; tell the truth, you're gone.

Mr. Scowcroft was not deterred. Like Banquo's ghost, he clanked around last week, disputing the president's absurdly sunny forecasts for Iraq, and noting dryly that this administration had turned the word "realist" into a "pejorative." He predicted that the elections "have the great potential for deepening the conflict" by exacerbating the divisions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. He worried that there would be "an incipient civil war," and said the best chance for the U.S. to avoid anarchy was to turn over the operation to the less inflammatory U.N. or NATO.

Mr. Scowcroft appeared at the New America Foundation with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, who declared the Iraq war a moral, political and military failure. If we can't send 500,000 troops, spend $500 billion and agree to resume the draft, then the conflict should be "terminated," he said, adding that far from the Jeffersonian democracy Mr. Bush extols, the most we can hope for is a Shiite-controlled theocracy.

The Iraqi election that was meant to be the solution to the problem - like the installation of a new Iraqi government and the transfer of sovereignty and all the other steps that were supposed to make things better - may actually be making things worse. The election is going to expand the control of the Shiite theocrats, even beyond what their numbers would entitle them to have, because of the way the Bush team has set it up and the danger that if you're a Sunni, the vote you cast may be your last.

It is a lesson never learned: Matters of state and the heart that start with a lie rarely end well.

The Council on Foreign Relations says:

By losing the trust of the Iraqi people, the Bush administration has already lost the war. Moderate Iraqis can still win it, but only if they wean themselves from Washington and get support from elsewhere. To help them, the United States should reduce and ultimately eliminate its military presence, train Iraqis to beat the insurgency on their own, and rally Iran and European allies to the cause.

Religiosity Ain't Faith

Inaugural Excess
This Is the Wrong Time for a Lavish Celebration

By Bernard Ries
Sunday, January 9, 2005; Page B07

In his Christmas Day radio address, Bush admonished Americans: "We have a duty to our fellow citizens, that we are called to love our neighbor just as we would like to be loved ourselves." That sentiment would have been notably served if, on the day after the election, he had announced that his inauguration would be confined to one modest day of celebration and he had urged prospective supporters to redirect their contributions toward charities and the needs of our troops and their families.

Such a gesture could well have caused major inauguration patrons to donate for eleemosynary uses (perhaps with a discreet note so informing the inaugural committee). It most certainly would have suggested the president's sincerity about the importance of a benevolent spirit. And, in thus displaying a modest charitableness instead of what many have perceived as ungenerous arrogance, he might have made a good start on mending the rupture between himself and half the country (and much of the planet).

Our recently elevated pledge of aid to Asia should now be helpful in that respect, as will signals such as lowering our flag for a week, sending Colin Powell to that suffering region and enlisting former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton to raise private funds. But these are the sort of boilerplate actions that might be expected in a situation of such horrific dimensions. In a time of great suffering -- in Asia, could we be looking at, ultimately, a half-million or more dead? -- what is required is a sign of true respect and sorrow, of sacrifice of a national symbol, that will acknowledge and honor both our fighting forces and the calamity of the tsunami. The inaugural self-indulgence now planned sends a directly contrary message.

We should substantially curtail the inaugural program. By doing so, we would demonstrate due regard for the needs and sensibilities of our citizens and our world (and put to better use the money to be saved -- District police security costs alone are estimated at $15 million). It isn't too late to act. In 1985 the weather led President Reagan to cancel his parade on the day before the inauguration, thereby disappointing 200 high school bands and equestrian troupes from 50 states. The kids survived.

This is no time for Sousa and fireworks and red-white-and-blue cocktails. Some future inaugural, perhaps.

This will be the most expensive inaugural in history as W celebrates himself while the rest of the world looks on in disgust.

Tort Reform

A Suitable Remedy
When the FDA Is Weak

By Robert B. Reich
Sunday, January 9, 2005; Page B05

An important factor in convincing Merck to remove Vioxx from the market was the mounting threat of lawsuits. Hundreds have already been filed, representing thousands of plaintiffs and including a number of class actions, blaming Vioxx for heart attacks and strokes and alleging a link to more than 1,200 deaths.

Analysts have projected that the litigation might eventually cost Merck $10 billion or more. Pfizer also faces a lot of litigation, although clinical studies suggest that Celebrex might not pose as great a risk as Vioxx. (Nor have any documents emerged, as they did at Merck, showing that Pfizer had doubts about its drug before the studies showing dangerous side effects.) The warnings and instructions now being offered to Bextra and Aleve users could reduce any potential liability in connection with those drugs.

Hence the importance of the tort system. Yet Republican congressional leaders, prodded by Bush's pledge to reform tort law, are expected to introduce legislation soon to prevent consumers from winning hefty damage awards from pharmaceutical companies if they're harmed by drugs and medical devices approved by the FDA. The proposal would cap medical malpractice awards at $250,000 per injured party -- effectively ending such suits, since the attorney's share of damages would barely cover the cost of trying the case. The proposal would also shield doctors, HMOs, nursing homes and hospitals from sharing liability for damages for FDA-approved products.

With Republicans in control and the pharmaceutical lobby on the offensive, the legislation has a good shot at becoming law.

On its face, the legislation seems only logical. There's no reason why juries should be invited to do the same risk-benefit analyses that the FDA has supposedly already undertaken. Indeed, companies that go through the expensive FDA approval process shouldn't have to continue to fight state court battles in order to effectively keep that approval.

But there's one big flaw in that logic. The FDA is no longer able to do its job effectively. The same sort of logical flaw undermines the argument for tort reform generally. Surely both systems -- regulatory and tort -- can function far better than they do now. But unless or until our regulatory system is up to the task, the current tort liability system is our only real defense against corporate negligence.

The situation is bad and is actually worse than the scenario Reich lays out: Merck knew that Vioxx caused cadio-vascular events before they put the drug on the market. Only the government can put a check on these kinds of bottom line pressures and the FDA should be strengthened rather than further dismantled. Bush's "tort reform" is a sop to big Pharma and the insurence industry.

If you aren't feeling safer, there is probably a good reason.

The Gasbags

For your dining and dancing pleasure:

The Talk Shows

Sunday, January 9, 2005; Page A05

Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows:

FOX NEWS SUNDAY (WTTG), 9 a.m.: Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

COLIN L. POWELL

FACE THE NATION (CBS, WUSA), 10:30 a.m.: Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF; former ambassador Dennis Ross of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.

MEET THE PRESS (NBC, WRC), 10:30 a.m.: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).

THIS WEEK (ABC, WJLA), 11:30 a.m.: Sept. 11 commission member Timothy J. Roemer, actor Don Cheadle and Powell.

LATE EDITION (CNN), noon: Sens. John E. Sununu (R-N.H.) and Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.); Henry A. Kissinger, former secretary of state; Richard C. Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Nabil Shaath, Palestinian cabinet member; Ehud Olmert, Israeli deputy prime minister; Marsha J. Evans, president, American Red Cross; David Nabarro, head of crisis operations for the World Health Organization; Powell; and Bellamy.

Man, Powell has really turned himself into a crack whore.

Catch Phrases

Iraq: The Devastation
by Dahr Jamail and Tom Engelhardt
Tom Dispatch

I've been in liberated Baghdad and environs on and off for 12 months, including being inside Fallujah during the April siege and having warning shots fired over my head more than once by soldiers. I've traveled in the south, north, and extensively around central Iraq. What I saw in the first months of 2004, however, when it was easier for a foreign reporter to travel the country, offered a powerful – even predictive – taste of the horrors to come in the rest of the year (and undoubtedly in 2005 as well). It's worth returning to the now forgotten first half of last year and remembering just how terrible things were for Iraqis even relatively early in our occupation of their country.

Iraqis were then already bitter, confused, and existing amid a desolation that came from myriads of Bush administration broken promises. Quite literally every liberated Iraqi I've gotten to know from my earliest days in the country has either had a family member or a friend killed by U.S. soldiers or from the effects of the war/occupation. These include such everyday facts of life as not having enough money for food or fuel due to massive unemployment and soaring energy prices, or any of the countless other horrors caused by the aforementioned. The broken promises, broken infrastructure, and broken cities of Iraq were plainly visible in those early months of 2004 – and the sad thing is that the devastation I saw then has only grown worse since. The life Iraqis were living a year ago, horrendous as it was, was but a prelude to what was to come under the U.S. occupation. The warning signs were clear from a shattered infrastructure, to all the torturing, to a burgeoning, violent resistance.

Liberation from seems to be the whole Bush plan: liberation from financial solvency, good jobs, civil rights, "homeland security", a healthy infrastructure, safe food and drugs, social securtiy. You name it, we're liberated from it.

Nothing New

Um. You don't win a fourth generation war using second generation tactics. I believe we've covered that in some detail.

Kerry cheered in Baghdad, decries Bush team's 'blunders'
Once criticized for war stance, he says force alone won't win

Baghdad -- Sen. John Kerry, whose seemingly shifting positions on the U.S. war in Iraq plagued him throughout his presidential campaign, came to this war- torn capital Wednesday to see for himself whether the country was moving toward stability or deeper into chaos.

Kerry, who repeatedly charged during the presidential campaign that President Bush had botched the war effort, was greeted warmly by U.S. soldiers in Baghdad.

"I've been visiting a lot places like Des Moines and Green Bay, and it has been great," the Massachusetts Democrat said during an informal lunch meeting with a small group of reporters and representatives of nongovernmental organizations. "But we are at war, and I think you can't really make all the judgments that you need to make without digging in."

He declined to compare the growing insurgency with the one he faced in South Vietnam as a Navy gunship lieutenant more than three decades ago. But he insisted that superior firepower alone wouldn't quell the uprising disrupting Iraq.

"No insurgency is defeated by conventional military power alone," he said. "Look at the IRA," the Irish Republican Army, which fought a decadeslong guerrilla war against the British in Northern Ireland before a Catholic- Protestant power-sharing government was put in place. "It was defeated by a combination of time and political negotiation."

Kerry, who talked with U.S. intelligence officials and Iraqi officials on Wednesday, was also scheduled to meet with officials of the U.S. Embassy and with members of the interim Iraqi government, including interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and a deputy to Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the Shiite leader at the top of an electoral list favored in Iraq's Jan. 30 elections.

U.S. soldiers approached Kerry inside the restaurant of the Rashid Hotel, asking him to pose for photographs and sign T-shirts. The star-struck restaurant manager insisted on serving Kerry the restaurant's specialty, a plate of grilled chicken and lamb.

Later in the day, Kerry met with about 20 soldiers based in his home state, including reservists from the 356th Engineer Detachment and 126th Aviation Company of the Massachusetts Army National Guard at Camp Victory, where soldiers are bivouacked in luxury villas once inhabited by Saddam Hussein and his loyalists.

"They all joked about how living conditions had changed since Sen. Kerry was in Vietnam," said David Wade, the senator's communications director.

Kerry was scheduled to fly on a C-130 military transport plane today to visit troops in Fallujah and Mosul.

The senator said he was more interested in asking questions of soldiers, U.S. officials, Iraqis and even the journalists themselves instead of rehashing the political battles of the past campaign season.

But in several instances, Kerry attacked what he called the "horrendous judgments" and "unbelievable blunders" of the Bush administration. The mistakes, he said, included former U.S. occupation leader Paul Bremer's decisions to disband the Iraqi army and purge the government of former members of Hussein's Baath Party. Both moves are widely believed to have fueled the largely Sunni insurgency.

"What is sad about what's happening here now is that so much of it is a process of catching up from the enormous miscalculations and wrong judgments made in the beginning," he said. "And the job has been made enormously harder."

And your plan, Senator?

God: The Beat Reporter's View

This is a really bad piece of work, but about what I've come to expect from Broadway, who is obviously assigned to a beat for which he has little preparation.

Divining a Reason for Devastation
Followers of Various Faiths Differ on Natural, Supernatural Explanations for Tsunami

By Bill Broadway
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 8, 2005; Page B09

Catastrophes often leave religious leaders fumbling for explanations. But there has been no shortage of reasons given for the South Asian tsunami that killed more than 147,000 people, many of them children.

In Banda Aceh, Indonesia, the hardest-hit area in the world's most populous Muslim country, imams blamed the Dec. 26 tsunami on lay Muslims who were shirking their daily prayers and following a materialistic lifestyle. Others said Allah was angry that Muslims were killing Muslims in ongoing civil strife.

In Israel, Sephardic chief rabbi Shlomo Amar, one of the country's top religious leaders, called the disaster "an expression of God's wrath with the world. The world is being punished for wrongdoing -- be it people's needless hatred of each other, lack of charity, moral turpitude."

In Sri Lanka, which recorded the most fatalities after Indonesia, Buddhist survivors told the story of a tsunami that flooded the island kingdom 2,200 years ago when a king killed a Buddhist monk in a fit of anger. They wondered which political leader angered the sea gods this time.

On the Internet, self-appointed prophets said the reason was God's anger at the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries hit by the tsunami, or His displeasure at the number of abortions worldwide. Some said the large-scale tragedy was a sure sign that the world will end soon.

Other commentators were less ready to assign responsibility to an irate divinity, instead pointing to the vicissitudes of nature.

"I personally don't attach any theological significance to this -- I listen to what the scientists say," Greek Orthodox theologian Costas Kyriakides in Cyprus told Reuters. "God is always the fall guy. We incriminate Him completely unjustly."

This is a "round up the usual suspects" kind of article, rather than one which deals in any depth with the issue at hand. It starts out with a supposition that natural events can tell us something about the nature of God (if there is one.) It proposes a deterministic Deity with human emotions. This is such an elementary school understanding of theology that the Post should be embarrassed.

Assigning reporters with little background in theology or comparative religions creates this kind of nausea. Ya wouldn't think it would be that hard to find somebody with a religion degree to fill that slot on the staff, but editors don't even know that this is what you should look for.

Yoo-hoo! WaPo! I'm available!

Messiness

This has been going on the whole freakin' time we've been in Iraq (anybody remember Fallujah?) but the MSM have just discovered it. If you've been reading the foreign papers and Juan Cole for the last couple of years, this isn't news. Hello, America! Wonder why we're hated around the world?

U.S. Bombs Wrong Target in Iraq

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 8, 2005; 6:10 PM

BAGHDAD, Jan. 8 -- A U.S. warplane on Saturday mistakenly dropped a 500-pound bomb on a house in a village near the northern city of Mosul, killing several Iraqis, according to witnesses and the U.S. military.

South of Baghdad, meanwhile, insurgents abducted and killed a Sunni Muslim official as he returned from a trip to persuade a Shiite Muslim leader to support delaying Iraq's Jan. 30 election.

The airstrike by an F-16 fighter plane early Saturday on the village of Aaytha, 30 miles south of Mosul, was part of "a cordon and search operation to capture an anti-Iraqi force cell leader," the military said in a statement. The satellite-guided bomb struck a house that "was not the intended target. . . . The intended target was another location nearby," the statement said.

The statement said that five people were killed and that the military "deeply regretted the loss of possibly innocent lives." The owner of the house told news services that the bomb killed 14 people, including seven children.

The conflicting death tolls could not be independently reconciled, and the military said an investigation of the incident was underway.

Later Saturday, on the highway between Baghdad and the holy city of Najaf to the south, the body of Ali Ghalib, the head of the provincial council for Salahuddin province, was found riddled with bullets.

Ghalib was abducted on the road Friday afternoon while returning to Tikrit from Najaf, where he had sought to persuade Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to support a six-month delay in the nationwide ballot, according to Shuaib Dujaili, a Tikrit official who had been traveling on the same road.

The fate of three Iraqis accompanying Ghalib -- the deputy dean of Tikrit University's law school, another official and their driver -- could not be determined.

Wars are "untidy," remember. Particularly unecessary wars that you are unequipped to fight.

Well, I guess the good news is that the WaPo is finally catching on. I had my doubts that they ever would. Kessler has been a Bush apologist for as long as I've been reading him.

Waiting to Happen

Deadly Leak Underscores Concerns About Rail Safety
By WALT BOGDANICH
and CHRISTOPHER DREW

Published: January 9, 2005

Ten months ago, government safety officials warned that more than half of the nation's 60,000 pressurized rail tank cars did not meet industry standards, and they raised questions about the safety of the rest of the fleet as well.

Their worry, that the steel tanks could rupture too easily in an accident, proved prophetic.

On Thursday, a derailment in South Carolina caused a catastrophic release of chlorine: 8 people died, 58 were hospitalized and hundreds more sought treatment. Thousands of people within a mile of the accident were driven from their homes.

And last summer, a derailment in Texas caused a steel tank car to break open, spewing clouds of chlorine gas that killed three people.

The exact causes of the accidents are still under investigation. But the devastation they have wrought shows why tank cars have become an increasing concern not just to safety investigators but also to domestic security officials worried that terrorists could turn tank cars into lethal weapons.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation warned in 2002 that Al Qaeda might be planning to attack trains in the United States, possibly causing derailments or blowing up tank cars laden with hazardous materials. And after bombings on commuter trains killed 191 people in Spain last March, security officials secretly persuaded one railroad to reroute toxic shipments that had routinely passed within four blocks of the Capitol in Washington, government officials said.

This crisis (and as the derailment in South Carolina shows, it is a crisis) cannot be lain completely at the feet of the Congressional Repubs or the Bush admin, it is one which has been building for decades.

That final paragraph is literally true, by the way. The CSX lines run right next to the Amtrak lines in DC, right through Union Station, four blocks from the Capitol.

But as these last couple of incidents show, we don't need terrorists for people to get killed, we just need lousy safety regulation and enforcement.

Long-term Prospects

For Unemployed, Wait for New Work Grows Longer
By JOHN LELAND

Published: January 9, 2005

Even as overall unemployment dropped last year, the share of unemployed workers who have been jobless for more than six months - the point at which most state benefits run out - has remained historically high. As of November, about 1.8 million, or one in five, unemployed workers were jobless for more than six months, compared with 1.1 million when the recession officially ended in November 2001.

Since the start of the recession in March 2001, the average length of unemployment has risen to 20 weeks from 13.

"Usually at this point in a recovery, job creation is skyrocketing, but so far that hasn't happened," said Kevin A. Hassett, economic director at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a conservative organization. "It's not a partisan issue, it's a fact. The labor market is worse than in the typical recovery."

The labor market is the worst it has been in decades, in fact. Ask anyone who has been job hunting lately (like moi), the competition is fierce.

NOKD

Colby King is by far and away the most humane columnist at the WaPo with an eye for the human stories other writers never even notice, much less write about.

Turning a Deaf Ear to the Displaced

By Colbert I. King
Saturday, January 8, 2005; Page A19

Drive-by news gathering, which passes as journalism today, conveys a superficial and misleading picture of gentrification in the nation's capital. The stories tell nothing of the wrenching consequences of people being pushed out of their neighborhoods. But how would those journalists know? They've never lived through the process of gentrification, and they don't spend nearly enough time in the community getting to know what they write about. Facile writers with clueless editors can get away with anything.

The tragedy is that this benign view of what's taking place in the city is also shared in top D.C. government circles, where our town's tightly drawn class and racial fault lines -- and those established residents who have been made to feel marginalized -- are ignored.

But why worry about any of that? The city's growing tax base of middle-class couples and singles makes D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams giddy. The sight of "undesirable" neighborhoods being rapidly transformed into places where wealthier folks want to live makes Williams go weak in the knees. These changes are just what the mayor, his economic planners and his business friends ordered. Besides, there's no time for the displaced. The mayor's too busy with the National League of Cities and, when he's home, being wined and dined in glitzy downtown restaurants, Georgetown salons and the homes of folks he never thought he would meet when he was laboring as an Agriculture Department bureaucrat. The whole thing has turned his head. So what if booming property values and a richer downtown cultural life aren't doing much for renters or the evicted?

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for growth and economic development. But not the kind that forces people out of their neighborhoods or across the D.C. line. Empathy for people about to lose their homes? Not today's Tony Williams. He is much like the fabled senior black Army officer who, when confronted by overly familiar black enlisted men who thought they had something in common with him, put them in their place with the gibe, "I'm your color, not your kind."

DC is an odd town, even for the South. There is more than a little truth to the old saw that it has "Southern efficiency and Northern charm." It's a racially polarized city, that also has a rigid class system. Reporters and columnists here are in the upper class and for that reason completely unaware of the other classes.

Rout 2005

Report paints bleak picture of Iraqi forces
US officials see urgent need for better training

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | January 8, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The State Department's quarterly report to Congress paints a bleak picture of Iraqi security forces in the run-up to this month's election, and Bush administration officials and specialists now acknowledge it could take years to prepare viable police and military units unless the current training program improves dramatically.

In some of the most violent areas of the country, Iraqi forces have been ''rendered ineffective," the State Department wrote in the report dated Jan. 5. Due to intimidation and attacks by insurgents, ''large numbers" of police, highway patrol, and border enforcement personnel ''have quit or abandoned their stations," it said. And many units are still waiting for key equipment such as rifles and ammunition, the report said.

President Bush yesterday acknowledged that the training of Iraqi forces -- considered the linchpin to an eventual American withdrawal -- is a major challenge. He said an assessment team, headed by a retired general, will go to Iraq next week to review the training and recommend ways to ensure they can more quickly take on a greater role battling insurgents.

''Part of a successful strategy is one that says there will be elections, and the political process will be going forward, but one in which the Iraqis assume more and more responsibility for their own security," he told reporters in the Oval Office. ''And that's precisely why the assessment team is going to Iraq, to make sure that at this historic moment in the history of Iraq, there is a focused, determined strategy to help the new government."

Bush added: ''Ultimately the success in Iraq is going to be the willingness of the Iraqi citizens to fight for their own freedom."

Bush is spinning fantasies. Bill Lind is not, in the form of an imaginary contemporary conversation between Kaiser Wilhelm in heaven and his senior commander Hohenlohe:

Jena

By William S. Lind

"If I may be so bold, what does Your Majesty foresee for the Americans in Iraq in 2005?”

“Indeed. And now I must excuse myself, as my train for Wilhelmshaven is about to depart. Wait until you see the Mackensens yourself! Come Der Tag, they’ll give those old Queen Elizabeth’s a drubbing they won’t forget!”

You can read the history of the rout that was Jena here.

Small Mercies

No Major Outbreaks After Tsunami, WHO Says

By LELY T. DJUHARI
Associated Press Writer

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (AP) -- Two weeks after a tsunami slammed into coastlines around the Indian Ocean, thousands of bodies were still being pulled out of the mud in remote villages, as the official death toll from the catastrophe rose above 150,000. In a rare positive note, the World Health Organization said no major disease outbreaks have been reported in the crowded camps where millions have sought refuge after losing everything.

"It is normal after a catastrophe like this nature to have some disease, but they are under control," WHO Director-General Dr. Lee Jong-wook said in Sri Lanka.

The U.N. agency has warned that disease could put as many as 150,000 survivors "at extreme risk" - doubling the disaster's toll.

Aid workers struggled Saturday to reach survivors and provide for their needs. Staggered by the scale of the disaster, aid officials described plans to feed as many as 2 million survivors a day for six months. The cost will be $180 million.

"This truly is the most extraordinary physical natural disaster I have ever seen," World Food Program Executive Director James Morris said after viewing the battered coast. "The damage is overwhelming, the loss of property, the loss of life, injury to people and the risk going forward is enormous."

Indonesia also said it was monitoring its international borders to prevent child traffickers from smuggling young victims out of the country, and it will set up special camps to protect children from criminal gangs.

The government and UNICEF also will establish centers to care for traumatized women, Minister of Women's Empowerment Meutia Hatta said.

There have been sporadic reports of attempted child trafficking in Indonesia since a Dec. 26 earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggered a deadly tsunami, but police say there have been no confirmed cases. Medan, the main city on Sumatra island, has a reputation as a base for criminal gangs that sell children into servitude or for sexual exploitation.

In Sri Lanka on Saturday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan toured the coastal city of Hambantota, where hundreds of shoppers at an outdoor market were swept to their deaths when the massive waves hit. The U.N. chief told reporters he was formulating ideas on how to respond to the disaster.

Sri Lanka, where more than 30,000 people were killed and 800,000 were left homeless, was the second stop on Annan's tour of nations afflicted by the worst natural calamity in modern times.

"I have never seen such utter destruction mile after mile," he said after a helicopter flight Friday over the western coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island. "You wonder: Where are the people? What has happened to them?"

Thank God for small mercies: that no disease calamity has compounded this tragedy. At least yet.

Only Connect

This reality has fallen off the radar of US media, even as it causes the disruption of complete societies, not unlike the plague of the 14th Century.

Nelson Mandela's loss

January 8, 2005

NELSON MANDELA announced Thursday that his only surviving son has died of AIDS, going public with his grief in order to help remove the enduring stigma of the disease. In Mandela's South Africa, 600 people die every day as a result of the silence rooted in shame.
....
lthough the government's response to AIDS has been notoriously spotty, South Africa's civil society has mobilized intensely to fight HIV. Especially in the cities, baskets of free condoms are placed in restrooms of bars and nightclubs, billboards frankly advertise their use, and virtually every local soccer league or youth center in the country runs education programs on safe sex, the perils of intravenous drug use, and the importance of monogamy.

And yet a national survey conducted by South Africa's Medical Research Council in 2004 found that a third of all sexually active people aged 15 to 24 had never used a condom. Obviously there is much education still to be done, which is part of the reason Mandela announced the death of Makgatho Mandela, 54, in the native Xhosa language.

"Let us give publicity to HIV/AIDS and not hide it," Mandela said, "because the only way of making it appear to be a normal illness, just like TB, like cancer, is always to come out and say somebody has died because of HIV."

South Africa's AIDS crisis has impeded the development of this young nation, independent for just 10 years. Whole industries are affected, such as mining. Ironically, the economic embargoes imposed on South Africa during the last years of apartheid isolated its truck and trade routes, which had the effect of containing the disease. Mandela himself admits that he was unprepared for the surge in HIV infections after independence and did not place a high enough priority on the problem.

Since leaving office in 1999, Mandela has worked to reverse that legacy. Addressing the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, last year, he said he would not rest until the pandemic's course is reversed. "History will surely judge us harshly if we do not respond with all the energy and resources we can bring to bear in the fight against AIDS," he said.

There are parts of Southern and Southeast Asia where the infection rates are as high as 8 in 10 adults. That's breathtaking, and we are paying no attention to it at all. As long as it is black or brown or yellow people dying, we have no empathy, it seems. This should be a scandal, instead of invisible.

From the People Who Brought You Abu Ghraib....

What would happen if you tried this with an adult? Looking for a $10 bill?

10 young students strip-searched in Texas

January 7, 2005

LA MARQUE, Texas -- Ten students between the ages of 11 and 12 were strip-searched as officials at their charter school tried to find a missing $10 bill.

Seven girls and three boys at the Mainland Preparatory Academy were searched down to their underwear Thursday after one of the girls reported the money missing, said Principal Wilma Green. The money was not found.

"It's not illegal," La Marque Police Chief Richard Price said. "We don't see it as a criminal offense." But he said an investigation was underway.

The search angered at least one parent, who filed a complaint with police and pulled her four children out of the school.

"I have never signed a consent to let my kids be strip-searched -- never," said Shelli Owens, the mother of a 12-year-old boy who was searched.

Green said the school has conducted such searches in the past without calling parents.

"Never had a complaint," she said. "I can't say if it happened again I wouldn't do the same thing."

In Thursday's search, the boys were sent off with a male teacher and the girls with a female teacher, who told them to strip to their underwear, Green said.

"Nobody objected to it. Most of the kids didn't mind because they wanted to get their name cleared," she said. "It was no different than what the students would be doing when they would be in P.E. We searched everything down to the socks."

The word "reprehensible" comes to mind. The new moral code seems to be, "you do what you can get away with." It sure worked for Enron.

When You Give....

Relief Agencies Grapple With Notion of Enough

By Sharon Bernstein, Mark Magnier and John Glionna, Times Staff Writer

As donations pour in to help the victims of the devastating Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, charities and relief agencies in well-appointed board rooms in New York and wrecked seaside villages in Sri Lanka face a tough ethical and practical question: How much is enough?

That question gained urgency this week after the medical relief agency Doctors Without Borders announced that the $50 million it raised in donations is sufficient to fund its work meeting the short term medical needs of survivors of the Dec. 26 disaster. The group asked that future donations be unrestricted, available for use in other emergencies around the world.

Fearing that they would be criticized for greedily raising too much money, other charities soon said they too would cap donations when they had enough for their roles in tsunami relief. But others worry that even the mention of limits on fund-raising could scare away much-needed donors at the critical and possibly fleeting time while public attention is gripped by the Indian Ocean tragedy.

"I was concerned that the public would think nobody needs more funding because enough has already been given," said Chip Lyons, president of the U.S. fund for UNICEF. "And that's just not the case."

Such a debate about plentitude might seem obscene to people on the ground in South Asia, where new horrors are unearthed every day.

"The local people desperately need tents, shelters, tools, very basic things," said Hazel Gallagher, a Briton teaching English in Thalpe, Sri Lanka, who's working with the Rotary Club trying and channel supplies to local residents. "People are trying to clear two feet of rubble from their houses with their hands."

The question of when to say you've raised enough money to help victims of a particular crisis has dogged American charities since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the American Red Cross said it would spend funds earmarked for terrorism victims on other causes, including a blood bank. The planned move sparked public outrage and a threat of legal action by the state of New York, and was later rescinded.

To avoid similar controversies, most major charities since have promised to tell donors when they've got enough, and request that any future donations not be restricted to a particular crisis - and many are doing so.

"Charities are being much more forthright than they have in the past," said Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which monitors charities.

On Friday, the Red Cross announced it would cap its fund-raising for tsunami relief at $400 million; because the agency has raised about $150 million, any cutoff is far from imminent.

"What we have committed to do in the wake of September 11 is to inform donors when we've received enough resources," said Marty Evans, president and CEO of the American Red Cross. "Because what we don't want to do is get us into a position of accepting more donations than we can effectively steward."

Doctors Without Borders, which calls itself the world's largest independent medical relief agency, still welcomes donations, said spokeswoman Kris Torgeson, but began this week specifically asking such major contributors as the Kaiser Permanente health maintenance organization to make gifts available to its general fund, rather than restrict them to Indian Ocean relief.

Hours after Kaiser Permanente announced its $500,000 donation to Doctors Without Borders, executives at the giant HMO received a surprising phone call from the medical relief agency.

"They said, 'We've got more than we can spend on the immediate needs there,"' recalled Ray Baxter, Kaiser Permanente's national director of community benefits. "They asked if we could make our donation unrestricted, so they could use it in other places if they needed to."'

Impressed that the relief organization had asked permission, Kaiser Permanente decided to give the $500,000 anyway. "The point was," Baxter said, "they asked us first."

This is just to show you that when you give, you aren't pissing in the sea. It matters.

He's Baaaack.

I don't write fiction because I'm not good at it. I know my limitations. Prof. Krugman explains:

Worse Than Fiction
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 7, 2005

I've been thinking of writing a political novel. It will be a bad novel because there won't be any nuance: the villains won't just espouse an ideology I disagree with - they'll be hypocrites, cranks and scoundrels.

In my bad novel, a famous moralist who demanded national outrage over an affair and writes best-selling books about virtue will turn out to be hiding an expensive gambling habit. A talk radio host who advocates harsh penalties for drug violators will turn out to be hiding his own drug addiction.

In my bad novel, crusaders for moral values will be driven by strange obsessions. One senator's diatribe against gay marriage will link it to "man on dog" sex. Another will rant about the dangers of lesbians in high school bathrooms.

In my bad novel, the president will choose as head of homeland security a "good man" who turns out to have been the subject of an arrest warrant, who turned an apartment set aside for rescue workers into his personal love nest and who stalked at least one of his ex-lovers.

In my bad novel, a TV personality who claims to stand up for regular Americans against the elite will pay a large settlement in a sexual harassment case, in which he used his position of power to - on second thought, that story is too embarrassing even for a bad novel.

In my bad novel, apologists for the administration will charge foreign policy critics with anti-Semitism. But they will be silent when a prominent conservative declares that "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular."

In my bad novel the administration will use the slogan "support the troops" to suppress criticism of its war policy. But it will ignore repeated complaints that the troops lack armor.

The secretary of defense - another "good man," according to the president - won't even bother signing letters to the families of soldiers killed in action.

Last but not least, in my bad novel the president, who portrays himself as the defender of good against evil, will preside over the widespread use of torture.

How did we find ourselves living in a bad novel? It was not ever thus. Hypocrites, cranks and scoundrels have always been with us, on both sides of the aisle. But 9/11 created an environment some liberals summarize with the acronym Iokiyar: it's O.K. if you're a Republican.

The public became unwilling to believe bad things about those who claim to be defending the nation against terrorism. And the hypocrites, cranks and scoundrels of the right, empowered by the public's credulity, have come out in unprecedented force.

Apologists for the administration would like us to forget all about the Kerik affair, but Bernard Kerik perfectly symbolizes the times we live in. Like Rudolph Giuliani and, yes, President Bush, he wasn't a hero of 9/11, but he played one on TV. And like Mr. Giuliani, he was quick to cash in, literally, on his undeserved reputation.

Once the New York newspapers began digging, it became clear that Mr. Kerik is, professionally and personally, a real piece of work. But that's not unusual these days among people who successfully pass themselves off as patriots and defenders of moral values. Mr. Kerik must still be wondering why he, unlike so many others, didn't get away with it.

And Alberto Gonzales must be hoping that senators don't bring up the subject.

The principal objection to making Mr. Gonzales attorney general is that doing so will tell the world that America thinks it's acceptable to torture people. But his confirmation will also be a statement about ethics.

As White House counsel, Mr. Gonzales was charged with vetting Mr. Kerik. He must have realized what kind of man he was dealing with - yet he declared Mr. Kerik fit to oversee homeland security.

Did Mr. Gonzales defer to the wishes of a president who wanted Mr. Kerik anyway, or did he decide that his boss wouldn't want to know? (The Nelson Report, a respected newsletter, reports that Mr. Bush has made it clear to his subordinates that he doesn't want to hear bad news about Iraq.)

Either way, when the Senate confirms Mr. Gonzales, it will mean that Iokiyar remains in effect, that the basic rules of ethics don't apply to people aligned with the ruling party. And reality will continue to be worse than any fiction I could write.

My brain doesn't work in th lokiyar world. I'll have to come up with something else.

Havoc

Death toll from tsunami climbs to 147,000

By Lely T. Djuhari, Associated Press Writer | January 7, 2005

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia -- The official death toll from the Asian tsunami climbed dramatically to 147,000 Friday and authorities held out little hope for tens of thousands still missing. Flying over miles of ravaged shoreline, a shaken U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked: "You wonder where are the people? What has happened to them?"

Indonesia said searchers found 7,118 more bodies in the shattered coastal town of Meulaboh, where families picked through piles of rubble. Indian officials raised that country's toll by 310, most of them killed in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, where 5,600 were missing and presumed dead.

Sweden, Britain and France warned they feared that nearly 1,100 of their citizens missing in the disaster were dead.

Nearly two weeks after huge waves struck 11 countries in Asia and Africa, the lists of missing were still rising. Sri Lanka, with more than 30,000 known dead, added 528 names to its ranks of missing, for a total of 4,984. Indonesia, the worst hit country, estimates 101,318 dead and 10,070 missing.

Officials said some people trying to find loved ones were only now reporting them as missing. "First the people tried to find them among the dead, then went around the hospitals. Now they are coming to us," said K.G. Wijesiri at Sri Lanka's National Disaster Management Center.

The jump in official figures for dead and missing came a day after a United Nations official predicted the final toll would be far higher. "I think we have to be aware that very, very many of the victims have been swept away and many, many will not reappear," U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said.

Annan returned from a helicopter flight Friday over the western coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island unsettled by the devastation.

"I have never seen such utter destruction mile after mile," he somberly told reporters. "You wonder where are the people? What has happened to them?"

Secretary of State Colin Powell toured stricken areas in Sri Lanka and promised long-term American help to rebuild. "Only by seeing it on the ground can you really appreciate what it must have been like on that terrible day," he said.

People flying over Sumatra have reported a veritable skeleton coast, with bodies still floating at sea. Bleached concrete pads are all that is left of substantial structures, scattered corrugated iron roofs crumpled like paper the only evidence of flimsier houses. A few intact mosques rise eerily from wasteland.

My brain has refused to get around this story. I simply can't imagine this level of destruction, of death, visited on human people. I'm simply staggered when I think about the human cost.

I know how to relate to people one person at a time. Being met by the spectre of death in this magnitude is beyond anything I can imagine.

Let's catch some phish!

Most of you who aren't dead have heard of "phishing" attacks by now. Phishing is a fraudulent attempt to obtain personal and confidential information. Login credntials, bank account numbers, CC numbers .. all of these are grist for the mill run by the fraudsters who run these scams.

A phishing attack arrives in an email that purports to be from a bank or other finacial service. SunTrust is a favorite, but many have been used: PayPal, eBay, Citibank, WaMu, the list goes on and on. The email informs you that there is some problem with your account, and to authenticate online in some way.

When the phisher can manipulate the server he wants to impersonate, detection can get very, very tough for the novice. The classical example is SunTrust Bank. And this is an issue which has arisen multiple times with SunTrust. Why the regulators haven't chewed them a new one is a complete mystery to me.

But the commonest method is to generate an HTML email, with the actual URL obfuscated. Something like

"We have detected unusual activity/violation of Terms of Use/ etc., and have suspended your account. Please click here to make the problem go away".

Except that the whole email is in HTML, not plaintext, and you are reading it in your mail client, not a web browser which would reveal the real point of contact when you pass your mouse over the link. So the actual point of contact is hidden. You don't see "www.scumbags.com", as you do looking at my example in a real browser. You see "click here" or "www.paypal.com/cgi.bin/webscr?cmd=login-run" or whatever string Joe Dirtbag decided to put between the <a href=".."> tag and the </a> one, and that's all you see. The fraudster is relying on your being fooled by the rendered image and not digging deeper. If you do, you have him by the short ones.

An example I got just this morning purported to be from PayPal. I will present you with the raw HTML of the key portion (the entirety is six pages long) to illustrate the technique.

To update your <strong style="font-weight: 400">Paypal</strong> records click on the following link: <BR><A href="http://219.144.194.158/verify/Verify.html"target=self> https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=login-run</A>

Here, Bumpers, is the smoking gun. 219.144.194.158 is not a PayPal site!! This can be verified by a reverse DNS lookup. The good folks at remote.12dt.com are unable to get the hostname! It is impossible to believe at this point that 219.144.194.158 is a PayPal IP. They would have a FQDN ("Fully Qualified Domain Name", like "blahblah.paypal.com", for instance) for it in DNS. And the folks at www.dnsstuff.com (reverse DNS lookup tool) helpfully inform me that the IP in question is in CHINA!!! In fact, we can make this even tighter. Paste the IP into the "Whois Lookup" window to find out who owns it. An Internet café, to wit, XI'AN QI XING PIAO CHONG NETBAR!!!! Case closed. Book him, Danno.

Now, for the bit that may be a bit mysterious. How to make that HTML fail to render, and appear as raw code. If you can do that, you can ferret out the actual contact IP being offered, and do the same tests I did, at the same sites.

I connect to my incredibly spam-ridden ISP through a webmail interface called SquirrelMail. I find that if I forward the suspect email to myself, what I see when I open the forwarded email is the raw code, not rendered HTML. Another way opens up if you use Mozilla or Thunderbird. Simply turn off HTML rendering.

I hope you find this useful. We are dealing with a brand new mutation of organized crime. The rate at which phishing emails are being generated and sent out is growing at an exponential rate. Every trick we can use to winkle them out is a useful mitigation.

Update

It feels like I've been away forever. Between fixing the computer and getting caught up with friends, I haven't even loaded the dailies into the browser windows on my task bar. I've got to run a few errands, but I'll try to check out the early editions of tomorrow's papers before I call it a day.

Wheew!

Thanks to pogge for holding down the fort while I was in hardware hell. I have now learned how to install and configure a new video card. Major props go to my bro and G K Nelson. I did the work myself with them giving me instructions by phone. It took a while to get all the pieces working again, but everything seems to be okay now.

We'll return to our regularly schedule programming as soon as I can get my sources set up in my task bar.

Murphy's law number seven

Hi, Bumpers. Pogge here.

Murphy's law number seven states:

Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

Melanie's computer is down. She's hoping to be back up and posting before noon. I'll let you know if I hear anything else.

Meanwhile, how has Murphy touched your life lately?

Processing

Obviously, I'm a little off my game this afternoon. I've got a lot of phone calls to make and contacts to pursue by email and on the Internet. Things should be back to normal (if I may make so bold as to use the word) by tomorrow morning.

Thanks for all the support. Bumpers rock.

Update: I notice that one (or more) of you have nominated this blog for a Koufax award. Thank you. From my heart.

Fired

Well, we'll be back to daylight hours (EST) content here for the foreseeable future. I got shown the door this afternoon. As always, my resume is up top of the right sidebar.

And so is my paypal link. If you can help....

Generosity

I rarely quote the WaPo's Richard Cohen because I find him to be part of the conventional wisdom most of the time. Today's column is on the money, however:

Conspicuous Compassion

By Richard Cohen
Thursday, January 6, 2005; Page A19

The thing you have to love about George W. Bush is that his deepest feelings seem evident on his face. It was, in fact, his face -- joyless, lacking almost all expression -- that told you precisely what he thought about the current effort by the United States to win friends in the Muslim world by raining money on tsunami-afflicted nations: not much. As almost everyone knows, and as the Beatles once sang, money can't buy me love.

In fact, given the way the United States has gone about the business of charity, it could just buy some seething anger. From the president on down, it has become the stated purpose of the aid not only to help the victims of the tsunami but to establish our credentials as a supremely good guy. "We're showing the compassion of our nation in the swift response," Bush said at the White House the other day.

Colin Powell, dispatched to what the State Department calls "the region," made a similar point about American aid and the Muslim world: "I think it does give the Muslim world and the rest of the world an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action."

It's hard to quibble with any of these sentiments, or with the assertion that America is a good and charitable nation. It is also hard to quibble with the assertion that the Bush administration was trying desperately to play catch-up. Its initial response to the tsunami had been woefully slow and low-keyed, and the president had not roused himself from brush-cutting and other vacation pursuits to represent us all and to say, merely and in awe, that something terrible had happened and we were sorry. For too long, the United States had a chief executive but hardly a head of state.

That opportune moment is gone and will not reoccur. Nor will our money -- a generous $350 million in government funds -- suddenly make us the darlings of the Muslim world. As the late Susan Sontag bravely pointed out in a New Yorker essay published right after Sept. 11, 2001, those terrorist attacks were in response to American policy in the Middle East -- not, as Bush has said repeatedly since, because Islamic radicals cannot abide freedom. No amount of money is going to change the fact that Jerusalem remains in Israeli hands and the House of Saud rules Saudi Arabia -- and the United States, understandably, likes it that way.

That is the truth, and we must not be disappointed when our aid, both public and individual, buys us little -- as, in fact, it should. Long ago, the great Jewish sage Maimonides promulgated his Eight Degrees of Charity. "The highest degree," he wrote in the year 1180, is a gift or loan that makes the needy person self-sufficient. But only "a step below" is charity given "in such manner that the giver knows not to whom he gives and the recipient knows not from whom it is that he takes" -- in other words, charity "for its own sake."

For many of us, this is an impossible standard. We want -- we often seek -- recognition (yellow bracelets), and we expect gratitude. This may explain why so much of the money recently donated to international aid organizations has been earmarked for tsunami relief. We see the victims on television. They are the ones we want to help, not the faceless victims of ordinary poverty, disease and modest disasters. If we can't see it, we don't give. I am not pointing fingers. I fully understand. My donation to the Red Cross was earmarked for tsunami relief.

But as I think Maimonides understood, the reciprocal of gratitude is resentment. This is especially the case when the charitable act is more about the donor -- oh, how good we are -- than it is about the recipient. In the end, it will not be gratitude we get but just more resentment. The rich -- rich people, rich nations -- are not beloved for their charity. On the contrary, they are resented for their wealth.

I note that the Austalians have just upped their donation to $1 Billion.

One of the hallmarks of Narcissistic Personality Disorder is turning everything into "all about me." That's the message our NPD president sends.

Bug Harbor

New outbreak of bird flu claims another victim
January 6, 2005

Hanoi: A boy in southern Vietnam has died from suspected bird flu, the lethal strain of virus that has killed at least 20 people in the communist nation since late 2003.

Nine-year-old Thach Phung, from Cang Long district of the southern province of Tra Vinh, died Tuesday night, hospital officials confirmed.

He was initially treated at the Tra Vinh provincial hospital, then transferred to the Hospital of Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City on Monday, where H5N1 virus tests proved positive.

The deputy director of Tra Vinh, Luong Van Minh, confirmed the boy had been in direct contact with infected poultry in his home village before being treated in hospital for high fever.

A 16-year-old girl from the southern province of Tay Ninh also confirmed positive to H5N1 and is in a critical condition in Ho Chi Minh City.

The World Health Organisation in Hanoi has said it was closely monitoring the girl's situation.

New outbreaks of bird flu have been reported in 11 provinces in Vietnam, mostly in the Mekong Delta, and include one in the north.
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At least 22,000 birds had been culled since December to try to contain the disease, local officials said.

"The demand for poultry consumption always booms when Vietnamese people prepare for the traditional lunar new year festival in early February," the animal health department director, Bui Quang Anh, said yesterday.

"However, the cold and humid weather has facilitated the spreading of bird flu in the country in this period."

The Prime Minister, Phan Van Khai, has ordered a ban on the transportation of sick poultry from affected areas to stamp out avian flu outbreaks and has asked authorities to step up their vigilance, particularly in regions along the Chinese border.

The Government said in October that it had brought bird flu under control.

It had made a similar announcement on March 30 but later admitted that the declaration had been premature after three people, including two children, died in August after being infected with the H5N1 virus.

Here is what to think about: the public health infrastructures in SE Asia are pretty primitive. Don't expect First World monitoring or treatment of whatever crops up.

These populations are a viral "sink," a place for new or emerging diseases to find their human footing. This is not a good thing. If we had any smarts, we'd be funding massive public health programs in this part of the world.

Missing the Point

Homeland Security Goes Begging

Published: January 6, 2005

Congress has a critical role in protecting the nation from terrorists by exercising careful scrutiny of homeland security programs. But so far, the House and Senate have been contributing to the problem rather than the solutions, distracting antiterrorism efforts by forcing officials to report to dozens of competing, power-hungry committees. The independent 9/11 commission cried out for an end to this "dysfunctional" system. Its solution was clean and obvious: create a single streamlined homeland security committee in each house, with both budget power and responsibility for oversight. Yet no national priority has been more shamefully subject to evasion by a truculent Congress ensconced in the traditions of turf battles.

Currently, the leaders of the Department of Homeland Security report to more than 80 committees and subcommittees in the House and Senate, each with a zealously guarded slice of the budget for securing the nation against terrorists. There is no one in Congress with the power or the responsibility to make sure the secretary of homeland security has the manpower and money he needs and to hold him accountable for the department's performance. Like the 9/11 panel, any average American could have seen the answer.

But not Congress. In its latest evasion, the House Republican leadership this week announced, with great fanfare, that it was granting "permanent" status to the existing House Select Committee on Homeland Security. All that was lacking was jurisdiction over homeland security budgeting, spending or performance.

Besides leaving the committee squarely in limbo, Speaker Dennis Hastert appeased powerful rival chairmen who were already sniping away at the homeland panel, which has spent the last two years scrambling for survival and office space. The committee's Republican chairman, Christopher Cox of California, can look forward to an inch-by-inch struggle for jurisdiction in arcane debates in the parliamentarian's office as his rivals - the ranking committee "bulls" of the Judiciary, Energy and Transportation Committees - invoke historical precedence over the newcomer.

Even as the new permanent homeland panel was proclaimed, rivals already conspired to deprive it of the jurisdiction for overseeing such basic essentials as the Coast Guard, border entries and cybersecurity threats to the country's electric power grids and other vulnerable infrastructures.

"This is the speaker's committee," says Mr. Cox, expecting help from on high. But even for an old wrestling coach like the speaker, refereeing the looming food fights over oversight and appropriations is no way to see that the people get proper vigilance and protection from their government.

As Charles has suggested more than once in this space, real havoc could be created by messing with our information superstructure. While Congress dithers over who has jurisdiction over what, the black hats continue their work.

Held Back

Not new news, just new to the front page of the WaPo:

General Says Army Reserve Is Becoming a 'Broken' Force

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 6, 2005; Page A01

The head of the Army Reserve has sent a sharply worded memo to other military leaders expressing "deepening concern" about the continued readiness of his troops, who have been used heavily in Iraq and Afghanistan, and warning that his branch of 200,000 soldiers "is rapidly degenerating into a 'broken' force."

In the memo, dated Dec. 20, Lt. Gen. James R. "Ron" Helmly lashed out at what he said were outdated and "dysfunctional" policies on mobilizing and managing the force. He complained that his repeated requests to adjust the policies to current realities have been rebuffed by Pentagon authorities.

The three-star general, who has a reputation for speaking bluntly, said the situation has reached a point at which the Army Reserve is "in grave danger of being unable to meet" its operational requirements if other national emergencies arise. Insistence on restrictive policies, he continued, "threatens to unhinge an already precariously balanced situation in which we are losing as many soldiers through no use as we are through the fear of overuse."

His pointed remarks represent the latest in a chorus of warnings from military officers and civilian defense specialists that the strains of overseas missions are badly fraying the U.S. Army. The distress has appeared most evident in reservist ranks. Both the Army Reserve and the National Guard last month disclosed significant recruiting slumps.

Helmly's memo was addressed to Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, and was sent up the command chain through the office of Gen. Dan K. McNeill, who oversees the Army Forces Command. It surfaced yesterday in the Baltimore Sun.

A senior Army spokesman, Col. Joseph Curtin, said Helmly's concerns are "not new" and are being taken seriously. "The Army is moving to resolve them," he said, citing a task force that is looking at ways to improve benefits for reservists and streamline procedures for activating them.

On Capitol Hill, Helmly's memo drew expressions of surprise and alarm. Several lawmakers predicted that the general's blunt comments would fuel an already charged debate over whether the United States has enough forces in Iraq and enough in the Army generally.

"By consistently underestimating the number of troops necessary for the successful occupation of Iraq, the administration has placed a tremendous burden on the Army Reserve and created this crisis," Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

"The memo presents more questions than answers," said Rep. Victor F. Snyder (D-Ark.), who deals with reservist issues in the House. "I think he's really making a plea to the Pentagon to change some of their practices or let him do some things he wants to do."

Helmly declined through a spokesman yesterday to discuss his memo, but he told the Sun on Tuesday that he had intended it to promote a frank exchange among Army leaders in advance of congressional hearings.

"The purpose of this memorandum is to inform you of the Army Reserve's inability . . . to meet mission requirements" associated with Iraq and Afghanistan "and to reset and regenerate its forces for follow-on and future missions," he wrote.

"I do not wish to sound alarmist," he added. "I do wish to send a clear, distinctive signal of deepening concern."

Don't say you weren't warned. I believe we covered this here more than a year ago.

Top Rack

Gonzales Helped Set the Course for Detainees
Justice Nominee's Hearings Likely to Focus on Interrogation Policies

By R. Jeffrey Smith and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, January 5, 2005; Page A01

In March 2002, U.S. elation at the capture of al Qaeda operations chief Abu Zubaida was turning to frustration as he refused to bend to CIA interrogation. But the agency's officers, determined to wring more from Abu Zubaida through threatening interrogations, worried about being charged with violating domestic and international proscriptions on torture.

They asked for a legal review -- the first ever by the government -- of how much pain and suffering a U.S. intelligence officer could inflict on a prisoner without violating a 1994 law that imposes severe penalties, including life imprisonment and execution, on convicted torturers. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel took up the task, and at least twice during the drafting, top administration officials were briefed on the results.

White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales chaired the meetings on this issue, which included detailed descriptions of interrogation techniques such as "waterboarding," a tactic intended to make detainees feel as if they are drowning. He raised no objections and, without consulting military and State Department experts in the laws of torture and war, approved an August 2002 memo that gave CIA interrogators the legal blessings they sought.

Gonzales, working closely with a small group of conservative legal officials at the White House, the Justice Department and the Defense Department -- and overseeing deliberations that generally excluded potential dissenters -- helped chart other legal paths in the handling and imprisonment of suspected terrorists and the applicability of international conventions to U.S. military and law enforcement activities.

His former colleagues say that throughout this period, Gonzales -- a confidant of George W. Bush's from Texas and the president's nominee to be the next attorney general -- often repeated a phrase used by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to spur tougher anti-terrorism policies: "Are we being forward-leaning enough?"

But one of the mysteries that surround Gonzales is the extent to which these new legal approaches are his own handiwork rather than the work of others, particularly Vice President Cheney's influential legal counsel, David S. Addington.

Gonzales's involvement in the crafting of the torture memo, and his work on two presidential orders on detainee policy that provoked controversy or judicial censure during Bush's first term, is expected to take center stage at Senate Judiciary Committee hearings tomorrow on Gonzales's nomination to become attorney general. The outlines of Gonzales's actions are known, but new details emerged in interviews with colleagues and other officials, some of whom spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were involved in confidential government policy deliberations.

On at least two of the most controversial policies endorsed by Gonzales, officials familiar with the events say the impetus for action came from Addington -- another reflection of Cheney's outsize influence with the president and the rest of the government. Addington, universally described as outspokenly conservative, interviewed candidates for appointment as Gonzales's deputy, spoke at Gonzales's morning meetings and, in at least one instance, drafted an early version of a legal memorandum circulated to other departments in Gonzales's name, several sources said.

Conceding that such ghostwriting might seem irregular, even though Gonzales was aware of it, one former White House official said it was simply "evidence of the closeness of the relationship" between the two men. But another official familiar with the administration's legal policymaking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because such deliberations are supposed to be confidential, said that Gonzales often acquiesced in policymaking by others.

This might not be the best quality for an official nominated to be attorney general, the nation's top law enforcement job, the administration official said. He added that he thinks Gonzales learned from mistakes during Bush's first term.

Is "Mr. Flexibility" who you want in the AG's office? I'm working with a group of clergy to make sure that this character takes his torture memos home.

We won't win this one, but if we can take some of the worst crap out of the W inbox, that's a small victory for freedom.

Give Until it Helps

Yes, Americans are generous people. Are they the most generous industrialized nation? Let the facts speak:

Giving for a Cause, and That Cause Only
By STEPHANIE STROM

Published: January 5, 2005

Amid the rush of generous donations to the disaster relief effort in southern Asia, more donors have insisted that their gifts go exclusively to help those victims, charities say, building on a trend seen after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

"People are very emotional, and they want their money to help the people that they see in pictures and on TV," said Thomas Tighe, president and chief executive of Direct Relief International, which distributes free medicine, supplies and equipment in an effort to improve health care around the world. "They make it clear that this is not about tragedies that exist elsewhere in the world, and they're very skeptical about how charities use their money."

Charities have long prized the "unrestricted" gift, which allows the organization to spend it as it chooses. But ever since donors learned that the American Red Cross planned to set aside for other uses more than $200 million donated for families of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, they have increasingly insisted on earmarking or restricting their gifts.

"I think after 9/11, everyone realizes how important it is to communicate expectations and intentions," said Betsy Deisroth, director of development at the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker agency that has raised more than $1 million for the emergency in southern Asia.

On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee proposed that Congress approve a plan to allow taxpayers to claim a deduction in 2004 for cash gifts to tsunami relief efforts made through Jan. 31, 2005, in part to help support the efforts of former Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton to stimulate private giving.

We like our "private" causes, and the illusion of control that goes with it.

When I got divorced a decade ago, I realized that there were several things I needed to do immediately if I was going to hang on to my sanity. One of the first was to find a place to volunteer, so that I wouldn't be spending all of my time on my own misery. Other people might have bigger problems, and maybe I could, ya know, help rather than playing the "woe is me game." Reading (and writing) have been my whole adult life, so I volunteered at the local Literacy Council and told them "stick me where you need me." I ended up learning to teach ESL to Afghan immigrants and it was one of the great growth experiences of my life.

If you are in a position to help ANBODY, any agency, any helper, give an unrestricted gift. If you like that agency enough to give, trust them enough to know how to spend it.

Open Thread

I'm off to work. This is your space. I'll see you later.

The Beat Goes On

Insurgent Attacks in Iraq Kill at Least 16, Bringing Death Toll Over Two Days to About 50

BAGHDAD, Iraq Jan 4, 2005 — Insurgents pressed their bloody campaign to sabotage Iraq's Jan. 30 elections with three car bombs and a roadside attack Monday, one near the prime minister's party headquarters in Baghdad and others targeting Iraqi troops and a U.S. security company.

At least 16 people were killed, bringing the toll over two days to about 50 and emphasizing how poorly prepared Iraqi's interim government is to provide security before the vote. U.S. and Iraqi leaders have repeatedly warned that the guerrillas would step up violence, but both have been unable to prevent attacks.

Early Tuesday, a suicide car bomb detonated near an Iraqi National Guards barracks in western Baghdad, killing six people and wounding 40, police said. The blast in Qadessiyah district occurred not far from the site of Monday's explosion in front of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's party headquarters.

Also Tuesday, gunmen killed the governor of the Baghdad province, Ali al-Haidari, and six of his bodyguards, officials said.

Al-Haidari's three-vehicle convoy was passing through Baghdad's northern neighborhood of Hurriyah when gunmen opened fire, said the chief of his security detail, who asked only to be identified as Maj. Mazen.

The country's defense minister, meanwhile, traveled to Egypt to seek help in getting Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority to take part in the elections. Leaders of the Sunni community, about 20 percent of Iraqis, say the country is far too unsafe to hold the vote.

A low turnout because of the fear of violence or a Sunni boycott could undermine the legitimacy of the country's first free elections since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958.

Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan suggested that if Sunnis agreed to participate, the vote could be postponed by a few weeks to give them time to prepare. Iraq's Sunni areas, mostly surrounding and west of Baghdad, have seen some of the worst violence in recent weeks.

But Fareed Ayar, a spokesman for Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission, seemed adamant that no delay was envisioned. "The commission is still working on holding the elections on schedule," he said.

Late Monday afternoon, a suicide bomber plowed his car into an SUV in a convoy that had just left the Green Zone, the heavily fortified area in the heart of Baghdad that houses the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government offices.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Bob Callahan said the convoy was carrying employees of the New York-based risk consulting group Kroll Inc. but had no details. An Associated Press photographer saw three bodies burning inside the wrecked vehicle.

A Kroll spokesman refused to comment, saying the company was investigating. The checkpoint is the main Green Zone exit for trips to Baghdad International Airport west of the city, and American contractors and diplomats commonly make the journey along the dangerous airport road in SUVs.

Earlier in the day, an explosive-laden car blew up when the driver rammed a checkpoint outside the offices of Allawi's National Accord party. Two policemen, a civilian and the driver died, and 25 people were wounded. Witnesses said machine-gun fire broke out after the explosion, which set fire to three police vehicles.

Allawi, a secular member of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority was not at the building when the blast occurred, his aides said. The Ansar al-Sunnah Army known for numerous deadly attacks against U.S. troops, Iraqi forces and politicians claimed responsibility for the strike.

"One of Islam's lions managed to carry out a heroic martyrdom operation targeting a large bunch of Iraqi police agents responsible for guarding the headquarters of the National Accord of the apostate Allawi," a statement posted on the group's Web site said.

A roadside bomb in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit killed at least six Iraqi National Guardsmen and wounded four, police said.

In Balad, about 50 miles north of the capital, a suicide car bomber killed four Iraqi soldiers and wounded 14, U.S. military spokesman Neal E. O'Brien said. "Anti-Iraqi forces continue to target the Iraqi National Guard" because the force is creating conditions for "successful elections," he said.

An Iraqi policeman was died and two were wounded when a beheaded, booby-trapped corpse exploded in the northern city of Mosul as "Iraqi police officers secured the site and attempted to search the remains in order to identify the body," a government statement said. It was not clear when the incident happened.

"This is another example of how the criminals and terrorists attempting to thwart Iraq's efforts to conduct free and fair elections have no regard for their fellow countrymen," the government said.

I know what to do: let's have an election! That will take care of everything!

Chapter and Verse

When good religions go bad:

In Angry Waves, the Devout See an Angry God

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, January 5, 2005; Page A01

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia, Jan. 4 -- Aceh's highly influential Islamic clerics have explained the giant wave that devastated this overwhelmingly Muslim region as a warning to the faithful that they must more strictly observe their religion, including a ban on Muslims killing Muslims.

The infusion of religious meaning into the tragedy, in a province already known as Indonesia's most fervently Muslim area, suggested the consequences of the Dec. 26 tsunami could extend well beyond the death toll. The sweeping destruction has torn apart the infrastructure on the northern part of Sumatra island.

The idea that the killing on both sides of a years-old conflict between secessionist rebels and Indonesia's military helped bring divine wrath could affect the way Aceh's 4.7 million residents view the central government in Jakarta. At the same time, the devout people of this region, who seem to have embraced their clerics' views, could demand even tighter strictures in Aceh, which is already governed by Islamic law, or sharia.

The extent of Islamic influence across Aceh has been on display from the moment the wave swept in from the Indian Ocean and flattened an uncounted number of towns, villages and neighborhoods. Down almost every road, beside almost every street, mosques immediately took in refugees, setting up tents and organizing food distribution before the provincial government or international aid agencies got relief operations up and running.

Azhari Banta Ali, a provincial official, said village and neighborhood imams across Aceh province have traditionally acted in tandem with local administrators in matters affecting their followers. The Islamic clerics here have little sense of hierarchy, he added, meaning the imam of each mosque wields strong moral authority within his own area.

"Wherever you go in Aceh, you will see the village leader and the imam working together," Banta Ali said. "One is the religious leader, the other is the government leader at the lowest level of the administration."

In this atmosphere, the swift care provided around mosques and the interpretation handed down in sermons and individual counseling by local imams seemed likely to be decisive for years to come in how the people of Aceh understand the tragedy that has befallen them.

"God is angry with Aceh people, because most of them do not do what is written in the Koran and the Hadith," the collected sayings and actions of the prophet Muhammad, explained Cut Bukhaini, 35, an imam. "I hope this will lead all Muslims in Aceh to do what is in the Koran and its teachings. If we do so, God will be merciful and compassionate."

This is both utterly predictable and utterly despicable. What Cody can't tell you, because he doesn't know, is that Sacred Writ, the holy book of every religion, can be warped to justify damn near everything.

I'm a theologian rather than a scripture scholar, but I've had enough contact with the latter discipline to know that regardless of the Bible or the Koran, bad things happen to good people. In no system of theology that I know does God visit disasters on people as a punishment. The folks who cook up a scheme like that haven't gotten a very mature world-view or spirituality, treating God as an angry parent. I suggest a quick look at Fowler's"Stages of Faith."

The Memoes

Bush's Counsel Sought Ruling About Torture
By DAVID JOHNSTON and NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 - Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, intervened directly with Justice Department lawyers in 2002 to obtain a legal ruling on the extent of the president's authority to permit extreme interrogation practices in the name of national security, current and former administration officials said Tuesday.

Mr. Gonzales's role in seeking a legal opinion on the definition of torture and the legal limits on the force that could be used on terrorist suspects in captivity is expected to be a central issue in the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings scheduled to begin on Thursday on Mr. Gonzales's nomination to be attorney general.

The request by Mr. Gonzales produced the much-debated Justice Department memorandum of Aug. 1, 2002, which defined torture narrowly and said that Mr. Bush could circumvent domestic and international prohibitions against torture in the name of national security.

Until now, administration officials have been unwilling to provide details about the role Mr. Gonzales had in the production of the memorandum by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Mr. Gonzales has spoken of the memorandum as a response to questions, without saying that most of the questions were his.

Current and former officials who talked about the memorandum have been provided with firsthand accounts about how it was prepared. Some discussed it in an effort to clear up what they viewed as a murky record in advance of Mr. Gonzales's confirmation hearings. Others spoke of the matter apparently believing that the Justice Department had unfairly taken the blame for the memorandum.

A White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy, said Tuesday that while Mr. Gonzales personally requested the August opinion, he was only seeking "objective legal advice and did not ask the Office of Legal Counsel to reach any specific conclusion."

As the White House's chief lawyer, Mr. Gonzales supervised the production of a number of legal memorandums that shaped the administration's legal framework for conducting its battle against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Of the documents that have been made public, only one was written by Mr. Gonzales. In that memorandum, dated January 2002, he advised Mr. Bush that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to fighters captured in Afghanistan. The next month the White House decided that the Geneva Conventions would be applied to Taliban captives but not to detainees linked to Al Qaeda.

As a result, a major area of questioning at his confirmation hearing is expected to be the role he played in the production of the other documents, like the August 2002 memorandum. That memorandum concluded that interrogators had great leeway to question detainees using coercive techniques that they could assert were not torture.

The Justice Department formally rescinded the August memorandum last week and in its place issued a legal opinion saying that torture should be more broadly defined and that there was no need to say that Mr. Bush had the authority to sanction torture because he has said unequivocally that it is not permitted.

Those who proposed that Term II for Bush II was going to be a political disaster have my attention.

New Age

Well, well. Another regime change, right here at this little Bump in the Beltway. The Boss has decided no blogging of any kind during working hours, not even over lunch, so my blog reading and writing time will be confined to the early morning hours and evenings during the week.

What this means, as well, is greater interactivity for you. Use the comments threads to post links and quotes from the things that interest you. You have a pretty good idea of how I'm using this site: join in.

As I've told you many times from my wide experience of the blogosphere (there was a 14 month period when I was here as a fulltime reader as well as blogger, inbetween sending out resumes) that you are the smartest, most thoughtful and soulful blog participants on the web. Comments are your field of dreams. This isn't "my" site, it is all of ours.

As you also know, I've never banned any commentor from this site and have only removed a comment once, to protect myself and the commentor from a possible visit by the gendarmes. I'm a first amendment absolutist, but I have limits. The ground rules: avoid ad hominem attacks, foul language, pronography (that's not a typo, take a look at the referral logs on the sitemeter sometime), try to use a citation or two to back up your argument. If you don't know how to use HTML to make links, read this.

When I started blogging over at Kos' place, I learned as much HTML as I needed for blogging in about an hour. I had to make a cheat sheet on a 3 x 5 card and keep it in front of me on the keyboard, but now I dream in HTML. It isn't hard to learn.

I don't have the time, money or energy to move this site to Scoop or Drupal right now, but due consideration is being taken about ways to turn this into even more of a community. You have some say in this; exercise it in comments, that's your forum, your bulletin board.

I'll try to remember to put up an open thread every morning before I head for the bus stop so that you've got an open field in which to plant. If you have other suggestions, you know how to plant them. My email address will change when I move to broadband this weekend, but it will be posted up on the top of the right sidebar. If you are already in my Mozilla address book, you'll also get an email when I launch the new service.

Now that my blogging hours are really restricted, the need for the speed of broadband is no longer a luxury.

Links are the Currency of the Independent Web

I was idly clicking around, just hitting links, over the weekend, not looking for anything in particular, when I ran into the site of a co-worker from 20 years ago. He was a student at Davidson College then, when I was the program director of the public radio station at the school. Say hello to Lex Alexander, now an editor at the Greensboro News and Record.

I also note that Mr. Nelson is writing again. I bookmark good writers.

Reading the News

Baghdad Governor Assassinated
Attack Shows Ability of Insurgents to Strike at Governing Class

By Karl Vick and Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 4, 2005; 6:31 AM

BAGHDAD, Jan. 4 -- With 26 days remaining before Iraq's election, gunmen assassinated the governor of Baghdad Tuesday. A few hours earlier, a fuel truck detonated near an Interior Ministry headquarters, killing at least eight Iraqi police commandos and several civilians.

The attacks followed the killing of at least 20 people by insurgents Monday in what has become a relentless daily barrage of violence apparently aimed at derailing nationwide elections set for Jan. 30.

Ali Haidari, the governor of the province that includes the capital city, was highest ranking Iraqi to be killed since May, when the former president of the now defunct Governing Council, Abdel-Zahraa Othman, better known as Izzadine Saleem, was assassinated.

Gunmen opened fire on Haidari's convoy from several directions as it moved through one of Baghdad's poorest neighborhoods, Hurriyah, according to Interior Ministry official Sabah Kadhim and wire service reports. Several members of his security detail also reportedly died in the attack.

"It once again shows that there are these murderers and terrorists . . . who don't want to see elections," said Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking in Thailand where he is inspecting damage from last week's South Asia tsunami.

Which part of "we're losing" do you not get, Colin?

Going Through the Motions

Attacks Continue in Iraq as Elections Approach
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and DAVID E. SANGER.

Published: January 4, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 4 - A bomb-laden fuel truck killed eight Iraqi commandos and two other people when it crashed into a checkpoint in western Baghdad about 9 a.m. Tuesday, according to an interior ministry official. Sixty others were wounded in the attack, which happened near the scene of two of the deadly car bombings Monday.

Insurgents also assassinated the governor of Baghdad Tuesday morning, killing Ali al-Haidari after he left his home, the interior ministry said. The Associated Press reported that six of the governor's bodyguards were also killed.

Hours after a wave of bombing attacks that left at least 20 people dead on Monday, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi telephoned President Bush and discussed the many impediments still facing the country as it heads toward elections in 27 days, according to senior American officials familiar with the contents of the call.

The officials insisted that Dr. Allawi, Iraq's interim leader, did not tell Mr. Bush that the elections should be delayed, though his defense minister said in Cairo on Monday that the voting could be postponed to ensure greater participation by Sunnis. "There was no substantive conversation about delay," a senior administration official said. Dr. Allawi, the official said, "wasn't even a bit wobbly" on that point.

But some officials in Washington and in Iraq interpreted the telephone call as a sign that Dr. Allawi, who is clearly concerned his own party could be headed to defeat if the election is held on schedule, may be preparing the ground to make the case for delay to Mr. Bush.

"Clearly the thinking on this is still in motion in Baghdad," a senior administration official said Monday evening. "And President Bush is holding firm," the official said, telling Dr. Allawi that the Iraqi government has met every deadline so far, including assuming power from the United States in June.

Mr. Bush has publicly insisted that the elections must go forward on Jan. 30, as scheduled, and said any delay would mean giving in to the insurgents who have vowed to stop the elections from taking place.

At what point does the word "FRAUD" get written over this picture?

The Neighborhood

I've been reading yankee doodle's Today in Iraq since the day he put the page up. His new site, Reader Contributions, is worthy of your time and consideration. These are thoughtful people debating the war. I like the "thoughtful people" part.

The Bearded Liberal Returns

Stopping the Bum's Rush
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 4, 2005

The people who hustled America into a tax cut to eliminate an imaginary budget surplus and a war to eliminate imaginary weapons are now trying another bum's rush. If they succeed, we will do nothing about the real fiscal threat and will instead dismantle Social Security, a program that is in much better financial shape than the rest of the federal government.

In the next few weeks, I'll explain why privatization will fatally undermine Social Security, and suggest steps to strengthen the program. I'll also talk about the much more urgent fiscal problems the administration hopes you won't notice while it scares you about Social Security.

Today let's focus on one piece of those scare tactics: the claim that Social Security faces an imminent crisis.

That claim is simply false. Yet much of the press has reported the falsehood as a fact. For example, The Washington Post recently described 2018, when benefit payments are projected to exceed payroll tax revenues, as a "day of reckoning."

Here's the truth: by law, Social Security has a budget independent of the rest of the U.S. government. That budget is currently running a surplus, thanks to an increase in the payroll tax two decades ago. As a result, Social Security has a large and growing trust fund.

When benefit payments start to exceed payroll tax revenues, Social Security will be able to draw on that trust fund. And the trust fund will last for a long time: until 2042, says the Social Security Administration; until 2052, says the Congressional Budget Office; quite possibly forever, say many economists, who point out that these projections assume that the economy will grow much more slowly in the future than it has in the past.

So where's the imminent crisis? Privatizers say the trust fund doesn't count because it's invested in U.S. government bonds, which are "meaningless i.o.u.'s." Readers who want a long-form debunking of this sophistry can read my recent article in the online journal The Economists' Voice (www.bepress.com/ev).

The short version is that the bonds in the Social Security trust fund are obligations of the federal government's general fund, the budget outside Social Security. They have the same status as U.S. bonds owned by Japanese pension funds and the government of China. The general fund is legally obliged to pay the interest and principal on those bonds, and Social Security is legally obliged to pay full benefits as long as there is money in the trust fund.

There are only two things that could endanger Social Security's ability to pay benefits before the trust fund runs out. One would be a fiscal crisis that led the U.S. to default on all its debts. The other would be legislation specifically repudiating the general fund's debts to retirees.

That is, we can't have a Social Security crisis without a general fiscal crisis - unless Congress declares that debts to foreign bondholders must be honored, but that promises to older Americans, who have spent most of their working lives paying extra payroll taxes to build up the trust fund, don't count.

Politically, that seems far-fetched. A general fiscal crisis, on the other hand, is a real possibility - but not because of Social Security. In fact, the Bush administration's scaremongering over Social Security is in large part an effort to distract the public from the real fiscal danger.

There are two serious threats to the federal government's solvency over the next couple of decades. One is the fact that the general fund has already plunged deeply into deficit, largely because of President Bush's unprecedented insistence on cutting taxes in the face of a war. The other is the rising cost of Medicare and Medicaid.

As a budget concern, Social Security isn't remotely in the same league. The long-term cost of the Bush tax cuts is five times the budget office's estimate of Social Security's deficit over the next 75 years. The botched prescription drug bill passed in 2003 does more, all by itself, to increase the long-run budget deficit than the projected rise in Social Security expenses.

That doesn't mean nothing should be done to improve Social Security's finances. But privatization is a fake solution to a fake crisis. In future articles on this subject I'll explain why, and also outline a real plan to strengthen Social Security.

Looking Good

Powell Touring Stricken Region to Show Support
By SCOTT SHANE

Published: January 4, 2005

BANGKOK, Jan. 3 - The international relief effort kicked into gear on Monday, eight days after the tsunami disaster hit, as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell arrived here with Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida on a journey intended to assure the devastated region of American support.

"The president wanted both of us to come out here to demonstrate U.S. commitment to the nations of the region and to make an assessment as well, to see what else we might need to do," Mr. Powell said during the 19-hour flight from Washington.

President Bush also underscored that commitment on Monday by selecting his father, former President George H. W. Bush, and former President Clinton to lead fund-raising efforts for disaster relief and by visiting the Washington embassies of Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Mr. Bush's announcement and the four-day trip through the region aimed to quash any lingering criticism of the administration's initial response, which critics said threatened to bungle an opportunity to win favor in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country, and in nearly a dozen other stricken nations. Relief officials said the toll was now 150,000 dead and climbing.

Mr. Powell said that while 15 Americans have been confirmed dead as of Monday, another 4,000 to 5,000 remain officially unaccounted for since their relatives have called State Department hotlines to report that they were in the region and had not been heard from.

But he and other officials cautioned that there was not a one-to-one correlation between queries and individuals, and Mr. Powell suggested that most were probably fine, adding that diplomats were continuing to check with families. "Now, they may make contact with their family, but the family doesn't notify us right away," he said. "But we can't ignore the very distinct possibility that there are Americans within this number who have lost their lives." He declined to speculate on how many may have died.

Mr. Powell also defended the United States pledges for relief, which increased over the course of last week from $15 million to $350 million, as a natural "scaling up" of aid as the scope of the calamity became clear.

Even as more and more of some $2 billion in international aid was manifest in the bottles of water, food, and rescue sorties in stricken regions, it became increasing clear that much help was arriving too late for thousands - possibly tens of thousands - injured and stranded for more than a week without care.

Doctors and relief officials said that many of those arriving for medical treatment, particularly on the all-but-obliterated western coast of the Indonesia island of Sumatra, were in precarious condition after in some cases spending days without food, water or attention to broken bones and lacerations. Wounds were infected, and amputations were common along with psychological trauma and cases of pneumonia.

"The death toll will grow exponentially on the western coast of Sumatra," said Jan Egeland, the United Nations relief coordinator. "We may be talking about tens of thousands."

Always show the flag. Do good if there is nothing else to do.

Our Future

More Women Opting Against Birth Control, Study Finds

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 4, 2005; Page A01

At a time when the medical community has been heartened by a decline in risky sexual behavior by teenagers, a different problem has crept up: More adult women are forgoing birth control, a trend that has experts puzzled -- and alarmed about a potential rise in unintended pregnancies.

Buried in the government's latest in-depth analysis of contraceptive use was the finding that the number of women who had sex in the previous three months but did not use birth control rose from 5.2 percent in 1995 to 7.4 percent in 2002. That means that as many as 11 percent of all women are at risk of unintended pregnancy at some point during their childbearing years (ages 15 to 44).

Researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics took pains to point out that the "increase is statistically significant" and that the "apparent change merits further study." Other analysts called the spike a troubling development that translates into at least 4.6 million sexually active women at risk of conceiving a child they had not planned on.

Because the survey is so large (more than 7,600 women) and known for its accuracy, "an increase of even two percentage points is worrisome," said John S. Santelli, a professor of population and family health at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Even as he cheered the news that a growing number of teenagers are using contraception, Santelli wondered whether doctors are neglecting women.

"Maybe we're failing with women over 21," Santelli said.

Although unintended pregnancies can be welcome surprises, the danger from a public health and societal standpoint is that many of the women are financially or psychologically unprepared for parenthood at that point in their lives.

The number of unintended pregnancies "is a very difficult concept to measure accurately," said James Trussell, director of the Office of Population Research at Princeton University and an authority on contraceptive trends.

In analyzing previous reports by the National Center for Health Statistics, Trussell has determined that half of all unintended pregnancies occur among the more than 95 percent of women who used some type of contraception, probably because the method failed or was used improperly. That means the other half of unintended pregnancies came from the sliver of the population not using birth control.

"That is why this is of enormous concern," he said in an interview. "This tiny minority contributes half of all unintended pregnancies."

The data come from one-on-one interviews with 12,500 women and men ages 15 to 44. Government interviewers, who spent an average of 85 minutes with each person, found that 98 percent of women reported using contraception during their reproductive years, and the pill was the most popular choice, followed by female sterilization -- usually by having their fallopian tubes tied. Female respondents were also asked about their partners' use of birth control methods, such as condoms.

The December report did not tabulate unintended pregnancies, though preliminary information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a slight increase in the birth rate in 2003, most notably in women older than 30.

Physicians, statisticians and advocates who specialize in reproductive health had several theories for the rise in unprotected sex. They pointed to possible factors such as gaps in sex education, the cost of birth control, declining insurance coverage, fears of possible side effects of contraceptives and personal attitudes about childbearing.

It is possible, said Paul Blumenthal, that many more women are trying to conceive and thus have stopped using contraception. But the Johns Hopkins University professor said it is more likely that more women have found the cost of birth control burdensome.

"Because the number of uninsured has increased, these women might be on the short end of that stick," he said. Since 2001, the number of uninsured Americans has risen by 4 million.

Jeffrey Jensen, director of the Women's Health Research Unit at Oregon Health and Science University, said he regularly encounters patients who have trouble affording birth control, even if their private insurance covers it.

"It is absolutely unconscionable that women have a co-pay of $20 or $25 [a month] for contraceptives and men are getting off scot-free," Jensen said. Drug companies "have cut way back" on free samples and many women turn to less effective types of birth control because of cost, he said, "running a greater risk of pregnancy as a result."

What I note is that so many of my cohort have waited so late to have kids that we are the IVF generation.

Affording birth control, for our younger members, ought not be an issue. We fought our asses off to make this possible

I Can't Wait to Get Out

Bush Asks 2 Predecessors to Raise Funds for Tsunami Relief
By DAVID STOUT

Published: January 3, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 - President Bush named two former presidents today to lead private fund-raising to help tsunami-stricken regions, and he personally delivered condolences to the embassies of four hard-hit countries as he and his top aides tried to erase any image of American insensitivity.

Mr. Bush announced that he had asked his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Bill Clinton to lead a nationwide charity drive. "Both men, both presidents know the great decency of our people," the president said at a White House ceremony.

Later, President Bush visited the embassies of Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

At the Embassy of Indonesia, the country that appears to have suffered the greatest loss of life, Mr. Bush said: "I look forward to working with the Indonesian government to help those who need food and medicine and water and shelter, to get their lives back in order, so that the great country of Indonesia can rise up from this disaster and provide the hope necessary for the people of that important country."

Mr. Bush also said he hoped to visit India this year. The chief White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said no time had been set. "We've talked previously about our relationship with India, and we continue to have strong relations with India, and we'll continue to build upon those relations," Mr. McClellan said.

The Bush administration continued today to try to dispel any lingering notion that the United States had been slow to react to the tsunami catastrophe, and that it had reacted inadequately when it finally did respond.

President Bush, who was vacationing at his Texas ranch over the holidays when the waves struck, did not speak about the disaster until some days had passed. And when he did comment, he sharply differed with suggestions that the United States' response ($15 million at the outset, with many times that amount pledged in the ensuing days) was stingy. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell offered a similar reaction.

Mr. McClellan was asked today why President Bush, who did not publicly comment on the disaster for three days, had decided not to attend a conference of donor nations in Jakarta this week as a way to "solidify his relationship with Muslims in a part of the world where we are now weak." Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim country.

"When this disaster struck," Mr. McClellan said, "the United States immediately went into an action mode to help respond to the crisis and the situation in the Indian Ocean region." Mr. McClellan noted that the United States quickly dispatched American military help to the region and established the "regional core group" of India, Japan and Australia to coordinate the flow of aid to the region.

Secretary Powell, on his way to Bangkok with the president's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, was asked whether he thought his visit might dispel criticism of the United States. "All of the nations that we are visiting have welcomed the visit," Mr. Powell replied. "There is always, you know, commentary about how one of these things unfolds. And why didn't everybody know instantly what the requirement was going to be. And I accept that. It's what happens."

Mr. Powell recalled how on Dec. 26 it was not immediately clear in the United States, half a world away from the suffering, just how far-reaching the disaster was. "I'm the one who is sitting there on a Sunday after church, trying to make sense of what has happened, with reports coming in from all over the region," he said.

"I don't think the American people should be given the impression that their president and their government was not hard at work on this from day one," Mr. Powell said.

Here's my problem with all of this: when we pay taxes, part of what we are paying for is the US footprint in the world, including the foreign aid part. It's a pretty minor part a fraction of 1% of GDP, rather than the 26% of the budget that most people think.

What's missing is a serious discussion of what that footprint should be.

Bush enlisted Clinton and his father to turn this into a private fund drive. The Japanese treat this monster as part of public life, while Bush wants to privitize it. That is a major statement about what is the division between public and private life.

This is the death of the public commons.

"Closure" is a lie, but this is a theological argument I'll have to make over at The Village Gate later this week.

I'm already hunting for a new job. The boss isn't somebody I want to work for over the long haul. Most of the office has been hired in the last year and I believe that there is a reason for this utterly startling turn-over rate. Ya don't stay where you aren't valued, and most of the joint has figured this out.

If you are a DC employer or an out of town one who can make a compelling argument for me to move, the resume" awaits your perusal, and I've added a few skills since this one was written.

Yes, I'll move, and high on my list of targets will be Canada. I love the Atlantic provinces and Ontario. Lure me to Alberta and the West Coast, I hear that BC is beautiful every season of the year. On another day, I'll tell you about the Kamloops zebras. I learned it in a convent in Toronto, and they made easy sport of me.

And I haven't laughed that hard in a very long time.

January 20, 2005

Demonstrators Mobilize Under a Slew of Causes
Factions Plan Protests Over Several Days

By Manny Fernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 3, 2005; Page B01

As inaugural planners organize a $40 million pageant for President Bush this month, Ashwini Hardikar is preparing for another kind of spectacle.

The University of Michigan junior is one of thousands coming to Bush's second inauguration to show not their support for the president but their rage.

"A lot of us are going to the inauguration out of desperation," said Hardikar, 20, who helped form a campus counter-inaugural committee to coordinate student trips to Washington. "We feel like we have to take desperate measures to feel like we've made a difference."

The Jan. 20th inauguration -- shaping up to be one of the most heavily secured and expensive in history -- will be the scene of small and large demonstrations. Organizers from dozens of local and national groups are planning marches, rallies and acts of civil disobedience on Inauguration Day and the days before and after.

Activists say the demonstrations will be as large -- if not larger -- than the protests at Bush's first inauguration in January 2001. They vow to create one of the biggest displays of opposition to the administration's foreign and domestic policies since the mass demonstrations at the summer's Republican National Convention in New York.

The battle between protesters and authorities has already begun. One group, International ANSWER, is preparing to sue the National Park Service over access to the Pennsylvania Avenue NW inaugural route. Demonstrators also are complaining about Secret Service restrictions on parade-route signs and displays, including a ban on puppets, papier-mache objects, coffins and signs more than three feet wide, 20 feet long and a quarter-inch thick.

"We think it's an illegal and unconstitutional overstepping by the Secret Service, working on behalf of the Bush administration, to prevent anti-Bush banners and signs from being visible along the parade route," said Brian Becker, national coordinator for ANSWER, an antiwar, anti-racism coalition.

This president required loyalty oaths from those who attended his campaign events, I doubt that less will be required for the coronation.

By the way, you and I are paying for the Secret Service and other security for this little privately funded event. Those of you whose employers track with the Feds for holidays are probably aware that Inauguration Day is not a holiday, which means I'm going to have to figure out how to get through all of this mess to get to work. And figure out which of the counter-inaugurals I can attend.

I love the smell of tear gas in the morning. The DC cops have demonstrated an interest and willingness to get nasty and ignore a big hunk of the Bill of Rights in previous anti-war demonstrations in the last couple of years. If I do go to one of these things, my risk of spending at least one night in lockup are better than they were in previous years. Any DC lawyers out there interested in a little pro bono work? Having been on picket lines in some particularly bitter strikes in the past 15 years, I know how much help it is to have a lawyer waiting to take a phone call.

Lawyers get a bad name generally in our society, one that isn't deserved. I know rather a lot of lawyers who are interested in trying to make the world a better place by sticking up for those without the power in an adversarial system, and they sure as hell aren't getting rich at it. I work with a bunch of 'em, smart people trying to do good with very little in the way of thanks.

I haven't gotten used to writing or typing 2005 yet. Where the hell did the last year go?....

Mongering

The Gray Lady calls this one correctly:

The Social Security Fear Factor

Published: January 3, 2005

If you've lent even one ear to the administration's recent comments on Social Security, you have no doubt heard President Bush and his aides asserting that a $10 trillion shortfall threatens the retirement system - and the economy itself. That $10 trillion hole is the basis of the president's claim last month that "the [Social Security] crisis is now." It's also the basis of the administration's claim that the cost of doing nothing to reform the system would be far greater than the cost of acting now.

Well, the $10 trillion figure is the closest you can get to pulling a number out of the air. Make that the ether. Starting last year, as the groundwork was being set for the emerging debate, the Social Security trustees took the liberty of projecting the system's solvency over infinity, rather than sticking to the traditional 75-year time horizon. That world-without-end assumption generates the scary $10 trillion estimate, and with it, Mr. Bush's putative rationale for dismantling Social Security in favor of a system centered on private savings accounts. The American Academy of Actuaries, the profession's premier trade association, objected to the change. In a letter to the trustees, the actuaries wrote that infinite projections provide "little if any useful information about the program's long-range finances and indeed are likely to mislead any [nonexpert] into believing that the program is in far worse financial condition than is actually indicated."

As it often does with dissenting professional opinion, the administration is ignoring the actuaries. But that doesn't alter the facts or common sense. If the $10 trillion figure is essentially bogus, so is the claim that Social Security is in crisis. The assertion that doing nothing would be costlier than enacting a privatization plan also turns out to be wrong, by the estimates of Congress's own budget agency.

Over a 75-year time frame, Social Security's shortfall is estimated by the Congressional Budget Office at $2 trillion and by the Social Security trustees at $3.7 trillion, a manageable sliver of the economy in each case. If the shortfall is on the low side, Social Security will be in the black until 2052, when it will be able to pay out 80 percent of the promised benefits. If it is on the high side, the system will pay full benefits until 2042, when it will cover 70 percent.

Contrary to Mr. Bush's frequent assertion that Social Security is constantly imperiled by political meddling, it has in fact been preserved and improved by political intervention throughout its 70-year history, most significantly in 1983. The system could - and should - be strengthened again by a modest package of benefit cuts and tax increases phased in over decades.

Lifting the income cap on the payroll tax would take care of the "problem" all by itself, but that would affect Bush's wealthy base.

I was highly offended by a story on NPR over the weekend which averred that because all of the young people surveyed don't believe that SS will be there for them when they retire, that it is therefore broken. The amount of really crappy reporting I've heard and read on this subject is really over the moon.

In the Realm of the Spirit

This is a fascinating article and demonstration of how religion and culture are intertwined. Thai Buddhism and Burmese Buddhism, for example, are as different as chalk and cheese:

Finding Solace in Religion, Superstition After Tragedy

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 3, 2005; Page A10

PHUKET, Thailand, Jan. 2 -- On Saturday, a week after massive waves devastated this normally boisterous tourist resort, Buddhist monks in orange robes performed a temple ritual for the dead. Water was poured on the ground. Offerings of food were accepted by monks from local Thais who flocked to the temples. And the bodies of Thai victims were set alight on funeral pyres.

In Thai culture, healing after a tragedy comes from giving. Thais believe that giving food to monks at temples is a way to pass food on to the dead. The water that is poured on the ground during the ceremonies is thought to quench the thirst of the departed.

For the monks, the ceremony was one of honoring the dead, accompanied by prayers to free them from earth's bonds so they might enter heaven. But for many Thais, who balance Buddhist belief with traditional superstition, the ritual carried an even more important meaning: The lost spirits of the dead still lurk here, they said, desperate, lonely and confused, and the ceremony can help them find their way out.

At the Wat Lampetch temple, where cremations have been carried out daily since the tragedy, monks said that a belief in spirits roaming the scene of death is one way Thais deal with grief over the loss of loved ones, although the monks dismissed the notion as superstitious.

"It's because the family thinks about the person who has passed away," said Choosak Chumchob, a senior monk who came here from Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand, to assist with the ceremonies. "They dream. Or perhaps they think they still see, or even smell, the person."

But some Thais are sure Phuket is full of ghosts seeking to move on, but unable to. "Some might go to heaven, some might go to hell," said Noi, a 25-year-old hostess at the Wandee Bar, an outdoor drinking spot just a few yards from the beach where thousands perished. "But the desperate ones are still wandering around. They might get lonely. They can't contact anybody. They don't know what's going on." Noi declined to give her last name.

The Wandee reopened Saturday, after the owner replaced tables and bar stools washed away by the violent tide. Women who work there are again standing outside, beckoning passing tourists to come in for a drink. But now, they said, they ask each other, 'Is that a real person, or a ghost?' And they go home early because, they explained, the spirits mostly stir around midnight.

Fresh Horrors

New horror stories of war crimes at Iraqi hospitals

by Dahr Jamail

The main hospital in Amiriyat al-Fallujah was raided twice recently by U.S. soldiers and members of the Iraqi National Guard, doctors say. “The first time was November 29 at 5:40 a.m., and the second time was the following day,” said a doctor at the hospital who did not want to give his real name for fear of U.S. reprisals.

Other doctors spoke of their experience of the raid. “The Americans shot out the lights in the front of our hospital, they prevented doctors from reaching the emergency unit at the hospital, and we quickly began to run out of supplies and much-needed medication,” said Dr. Ahmed, who gave only a first name. U.S. troops prevented doctors from entering the hospital on several occasions, he said.

Top of the Bubble

The DC area is considered "recession proof" because of the presence of the Feds and the defense contractors. I spent 14 months looking for work (700 resumes went out) and a friend of mine with even more degrees and defense contractor background spent 18. If you think this economy is clicking along nicely, you aren't paying attention. We are a long ways from being out of the woods.

Optimism Tempered by Memory
This Is No Time For Giddiness, Executives Agree

By Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 3, 2005; Page E01

Washington area business leaders have many reasons to be happy as they enter 2005.

Corporate income tax receipts for 2004 were up in the District, Maryland and Virginia, indicating healthy profit growth. Local employers added jobs at the same pace they did in the 1990s, giving Washington the strongest job growth in the nation over the 12 months that ended in November. The share prices of local public companies rose 25 percent in 2004, as measured by the Bloomberg-Washington Post index.

But executives aren't exactly celebrating. Too many remember how badly they were burned at the end of the last boom, in 2001, and they remain cautious.

"We just don't feel as good as we are," said Peter F. Nostrand, Washington area president of SunTrust Bank.

So as the new year begins, many Washington area executives, although optimistic, say their strategies are influenced by things that could go wrong. High on the list of worries are rising interest rates, an expected slowdown in the growth of federal spending, policy issues and larger economic trends, such as the price of steel.

Business plans are being tweaked accordingly.

Thomas S. Bozzuto, chief executive of Bozzuto Development Co., a construction and development company in Greenbelt, has been watching closely as the Federal Reserve Bank steadily increases interest rates. Bozzuto figures that if the Fed's actions cause mortgage rates to rise significantly, the demand for the high-price houses and condominiums he builds could weaken.

The region's housing boom, fueled in part by low interest rates, has played a huge role in Washington's recent economic growth, as builders added 9,500 jobs to keep up with the demand for new houses, offices and condos. But many in the business are skeptical that such strong growth can continue.

"The building business has been so good for so long that we in the industry are sitting around, waiting for someone to blow the whistle that says 'stop,' " Bozzuto said. "Most of us are old enough to have lived through prior down cycles. It hasn't happened yet, but we're worried."

Bozzuto is switching his focus from condos to apartment buildings, even though apartment rents have been rising slowly. He is betting that by the time his new rental apartment buildings are done in two or three years, rising interest rates will have made condos less attractive, sending people back to the rental market.

The DC housing market is in a classic bubble right now. If I'm right, Bozzuto is prescient in switching to the rental market.

Defining Tragedy

There's another deadly horror as disturbing as tsunami

Still, we should be just as willing to acknowledge the deadly horror we helped unleash in Iraq, no matter our intentions or hopes as we chose to invade.

The death and mayhem is on a similar scale, but the horrors of the tsunami are easier for journalists to cover. As one of our telegenic Iraq-invasion generals put it, in that country, "We don't do body counts."

Some people would just as soon we not know how many Iraqis have died in the war we declared necessary. So we don't know. We have to guess about the guesses.

As we enter 2005, my worry about Iraq focuses on the continuing deaths and maiming injuries of our service people, and the disruptions to the lives of Americans sent into service there.

I think about innocent and ordinary Iraqis, too, but that comes second. Like most humans, I care most about those closer to me and mine. So I care more about the Americans we put "in harm's way."

That is the poetic phrase so prized by politicians for its soft-focus ambiance. We don't like to say we send our people where many will be ripped apart, disemboweled or burned by explosives, and where they may have arms, legs, eyes, faces sheared away. Instead, they bravely risk "harm."

But we have put Iraqis in harm's way, too, and far, far more of them have been killed or maimed. That includes children killed and mutilated by our cluster bombs and our smart bombs and by the explosives used by those who want to expel us from Iraq.

Those Iraqi children have been just as overwhelmed by terrible forces beyond their control as were those drowned by a monstrous wave from the sea. But their wave hasn't receded.

We helped make that terrible wave when we chose war. President Bush has been reluctant to acknowledge that things are not going anywhere near as he expected. Yet he is equally unwilling to say he ever suspected so many might die, be maimed and have their livelihoods destroyed if we took the path he urged.

Our invasion transformed a brutally controlled police state led by a terrible dictator and created a place of anarchy, ruthlessly violent insurrection and general dysfunction where more and more American troops are needed just to keep the chaos from becoming even worse.

Maybe Iraq will someday soon have a government that can maintain order and some semblance of liberty and safety, without being as brutal and bloody as the last government. That makes for a good New Year's wish.

But maybe by the end of 2005 we will still be wondering whether guns and bombs, which so often kill innocent and guilty alike as mindlessly as a tsunami, can ever achieve anything.

Ya work wit' what ya got

"The Distribution System Is Not Working',

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 3, 2005; Page A01

BUNG BAK YOK, Indonesia, Jan. 2 -- Rukaiyah's right arm has swollen dangerously, pus leaking from an angry gash along the inside of her elbow. The skin has yellowed on a forearm puffy all the way to the wrist. Unchecked infection has led to the threat -- and maybe the onset -- of gangrene.

But Rukaiyah, 28, has not seen a doctor since a torrent of water destroyed her home a week ago in Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia's Aceh province, and swept her along for hundreds of yards in an uncontrollable surge marked by multiple collisions with churning debris. The mosque where she has found refuge along with 1,000 other tsunami victims has not been visited by medical personnel, refugees said. It has run short of tarpaulins to shelter from the rain, short of rice to eat, and short of pots and stoves to cook it in.

Nila Sartika Dewi, 26, cries on the steps of a mosque where she found refuge in the village of Darusalam, Indonesia, near Banda Aceh. She fled to Darusalam after the tsunami leveled her village of Kadju on Sunday. (Peter Dejong -- AP)

And yet Bung Bak Yok, this little village where Manassa Mosque has responded to last week's disaster as best it can, lies only three miles east of Banda Aceh's Sultan Iskandar Muda Airport, where planeload after planeload of relief supplies and emergency medical teams have begun pouring in.

A week into one of the most devastating disasters in South Asia's history, an international campaign to help Indonesia recover has at last moved into gear, with the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft delivering food, medicine and tents. But from the airport on, the distribution system slapped together by still reeling local officials and visiting international aid groups has proved spotty at best. In camp after camp, village after village, people like Rukaiyah have yet to receive all the help they need.

"The distribution system is not working," said Nassir Khan Abdurrahman, a Malaysian Red Crescent volunteer who has logged more than 30 years' experience responding to natural disasters in Asia. "They know where to send it, but they have their friends, they have their families."

For Abdurrahman, two main factors slowed operations. The first was a lack of trucks. The second was the Indonesian military, which has taken charge of the airport warehouse, where goods are received from relief flights and stored until they can be distributed around Banda Aceh and other damaged towns. With its control of outgoing supplies, the military has played the major role in determining where scarce trucks head with their precious cargoes.

Disturbed by the way things were going, Abdurrahman said, he helped organize a protest Saturday by leaders of non-governmental aid groups to demand a change in the procedure. As a result, coordination of the aid flow out of the warehouse shifted -- at least in principle -- to a civilian logistics specialist from an Indonesian aid organization.

Aid officials from other countries, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were reluctant to be seen as criticizing the Indonesian military, also complained of the army's central role in distributing aid over the last week. For political reasons as well, they expressed eagerness to deal with Indonesia's civilian government rather than its military officers. The issue is particularly sensitive in Aceh province, where Indonesian troops have been fighting a separatist rebel movement with tough, sometimes brutal tactics.

At the same time, there is little civilian government to work with in some areas. The tsunami struck with such force across the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where Aceh province is located, that the civilian administrations of the province and Banda Aceh city were incapacitated. Many officials were killed in the unfurling waves. Many others lost their families, their homes and their health. As a result, the military has proved to be the only organization capable of responding swiftly with men and vehicles.

Bump as Home

4 am comes awfully early and I'm going to load the coffee pot so that I can get ready for a Bump day while I do my paid job. I start the Bump on weekdays before 5 AM, I slept in until 6 this morning knowing that I had the whole day to work on it.

Most days, I start between 4 and 5 in morning, bringing you the updates you need before you start for work. You'll get another couple of posts over my lunch and afternoon breaks, on the days I can take them, they've been awfully hard to find lately. And another couple of more philosophical posts fill the evening on weekdays. You get this for free, the 500 or so of you who aren't googlers looking for last weeks porn spam. On the weekend and holidays, I'm 24/7.

I'm really working two jobs, and one of them has no salary. If you would like to fix that, the tip jar is up and to the right. You get what you pay for.

I'd love to be blogging full-time, but only Duncan, Kevin and Matt have figured out how to make this work. If you would like to vote otherwise, I think you know the address. I can't keep this up without help.

Thank you.

Platform Shoes

pogge and I are in a discussion about changing platforms. We've learned recently (from Photodude, among others) that the very popularity of Movable Type has made it a target for the the cracker/porn-spammers that have been such a nuisance (and make me feel physically assaulted) lately. pogge, being the technologist of the two of us, has been researching other software. Me, I'm just a writer.

We've both been looking at Word Press, a free, standalone platform we can each install on our host servers. From the reader's point of view, it won't work a whole lot differently than MT. pogge hasn't worked out all the details for porting the design of the site into the new platform (and this stuff is still beyond me) but assures me that it is extremely easy to use from the "back end," where I do my posting. I'm already using the software at The American Street and find it quite user friendly.

I'm going to have to make the final decision (in consultation with Charles and pogge, I think) but I wonder if you all have any thoughts on this? I spent an hour and a half the other day cleaning out the porn spam, even with MT-Blacklist and MT-CloseComment installed and I just can't keep doing that, I don't have that kind of time. I checked my activity log, and pogge has put in even more time than that, and he's a volunteer. I can't ask anybody else for that kind of committment. He's a busy IT consultant and developer with a business and a site of his own to maintain along with the other ones he hosts. I want to be writing and researching, not figuring out the software.

Are there any strong feelings about making a change kicking around here? I'd like to know about them now.

In Flanders' Field

An Afghan Quandary for the U.S.
# Bush administration is split over a response to a likely record opium poppy crop: push for aerial eradication or let local officials handle it?

By Sonni Efron, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — With a bumper poppy harvest expected in Afghanistan in the new year, a debate has erupted within the Bush administration on whether the United States should push for the crop's destruction despite the objections of the Afghan government.

Some U.S. officials advocate aerial spraying to reduce the opium crop, warning that if harvested, it could flood the West with heroin, fill the coffers of Taliban fighters and fund terrorist activity in Afghanistan and beyond. They estimate the haul could earn Afghan warlords up to $7 billion, up from a record $2.2 billion in 2004.

With the January planting season approaching, the State Department is asking Congress to earmark nearly $780 million in aid to Afghanistan, the world's largest opium producer, for a counter-narcotics effort that would include $152 million for aerial eradication.

Although Afghan President Hamid Karzai has declared a "jihad" against the drug trade, he has vetoed aerial spraying. And his stance is supported by some U.S. officials, who warn that attempts at mass crop eradication in spring, during the campaign season for parliamentary elections scheduled for April, will alienate rural voters. Instead, they argue for a delay in crop eradication but a vigorous crackdown on drug traffickers.

The dispute underscores a vexing dilemma for the United States. Having ousted the Taliban from power, the Bush administration now finds that its three main policy objectives in the strategically important country — counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics and political stability — appear to be contradictory.

President Bush's Cabinet has discussed the problem, sources said, and the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan met with Bush in December. But the White House has reportedly not made a final decision.

Bushco is hoist on its own petard with this one. They made a similar mistake in Iraq: if you don't provide a way for people to earn a living, they are going to find ways of their own.

The Essentials

In its series of articles on the absolute essentials that we'll continue to need 15 years hence, the WaPo offers quotes from people famous and not about their personal essentials. I offer it here for some light reading (Lord knows we need a little on this dark beginning of the New Year.)

Scientific truth as an absolute value.
-- Richard Dawkins,
Oxford professor and author
of "The Ancestor's Tale"
•

Print. If for the past 400 years we'd been getting all of our info electronically, and somebody invented a way to put it on paper and deliver it to our doorsteps so we could read it in the back yard or bath or bus, people would say this new print technology is so wonderful it will replace the Internet.
-- Walter Isaacson,
president, Aspen Institute
•

The ability to type.
-- John McWhorter,
senior fellow, Manhattan Institute
•

Retirement.
-- Charles Foehrkolb,
MARC train conductor

My own essentials include paperback books, cheap Chardonnay and the New York Review. How about yours?

Cutting Short a Vacation Instead of Brush

While our Chief Executive cuts brush, others are trying to get things done to, ya know, actually help the survivors:

PM calls meeting on Asia disaster
Last Updated Sun, 02 Jan 2005 10:14:50 EST

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Paul Martin has called a cabinet meeting for Sunday to deal with Canada's response to the earthquake and tsunami that left at least 124,000 people dead in 11 countries in southern Asia and East Africa.

Martin will speak to reporters following the meeting on Sunday.

Those of you who see the press conference and can chime in, feel free. I don't get the CBC or the BBC except on those rare ocassions when C-Span decides to carry them.

Rose Colored Glasses

New Year's Nervousness

Sunday, January 2, 2005; Page B05

Normally upbeat Americans entered 2005 more apprehensive about what the new year holds in store for them and more pessimistic than they were last year about the nation's economy, the situation in Iraq and the ability of the country to defend itself against terrorist attacks, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Overall, most Americans still maintain a rosy view. Two-thirds of those interviewed said they begin the new year more hopeful than fearful about what the future holds for them. But that's a decrease of nearly 20 percentage points from last year's survey, when hope sparked by the upcoming presidential election and the capture of Saddam Hussein put smiles on the faces of nearly nine in 10.

Views about the state of the rest of the world also dimmed. Slightly more than half (54 percent) said they were more hopeful about how the world would fare over the next year, down from 69 percent a year ago.

When asked about specific concerns, the news was equally mixed. Nearly six in 10 (57 percent) said they were optimistic about the way things were generally going in this country. But that's down a dozen percentage points in the past 12 months.

Iraq is causing more anxiety for Americans this new year. Fewer than half (46 percent) said they were hopeful about the situation in Iraq -- a 12 point decline in less than a year -- while 51 percent were pessimistic. A total of 1,004 adults were interviewed Dec. 16-19 for this Post-ABC poll.

On a more positive note, three in four felt optimistic about the state of their family's personal financial situation, though fewer -- 58 percent -- were equally positive about the national economy, down five points in the past year. Two in three were still upbeat about the country's ability to defend itself against terrorist attacks, though that represented a drop of nine percentage points since last year.

Max Sawicky points us to an article by economist Dean Baker who believes that much of what gets counted as "growth" right now is based on bubbles in the two forms of equity available to most people: stocks and real estate. This is something that's been scaring me, too. If the housing bubble, in particular, busts due to a run up in interest rates (which have to go up in order to keep foreign investors interested in financing our debt) the fallout won't be pretty.

Secret Candidates

Delay the Elections

By Adnan Pachachi
Sunday, January 2, 2005; Page B07

Iraq is now barely four weeks away from scheduled elections, which will not merely install the next government but will also put in place an assembly to draft a permanent constitution. It is clear, however, that no constitution drafted while parts of Iraq are unrepresented can possibly have a claim to legitimacy. Under the existing system of proportional representation, Iraq is treated as one electoral district, so that a low voter turnout in some parts of the country and a heavy turnout in others will leave a large segment of the population disenfranchised and many regions underrepresented.

In spite of my misgivings, we are ready to participate in the elections, and I have submitted a list of candidates for my party. But delaying the elections for a few months would enable us to engage groups that are now outside the political process while addressing the security situation.

That situation has deteriorated significantly. None of us could have imagined a year ago that parents would refuse to send their children to school because of rampant kidnapping in the capital, Baghdad. Baghdadis have told me that they have no intention of leaving their homes on Election Day, because they fear the terrorists. The same can be said of areas such as Fallujah, Samarra and Mosul, where a recent attack on a U.S. Army base shows how easy it would be to disrupt elections, as do the recent bombings in Karbala. Nothing remotely like electioneering takes place in Iraq, even in relatively peaceful areas in the south and north. For candidates to announce mass rallies would be to issue an open invitation for terrorists to attack. Not many electoral messages beamed on radio and television will be seen or heard because of the nationwide electricity crisis.

Some argue that delaying elections would give a victory to the terrorists, and I admit there is merit in this argument. But there is more than one way for the terrorists to win in Iraq in January. Another would be for them to cause large numbers of Iraqis to stay away from the polls, not in protest but out of fear for their lives. That would result in elections whose legitimacy would be questioned. Whoever was perceived as having won such a flawed election would claim a mandate, while others would claim they had been disenfranchised. Very few scenarios take us deeper into chaos and civil unrest than this very likely outcome. I would argue that the prospect of these disastrous events unfolding is far worse than any short-lived claim of victory the terrorists might make.

What neither Pachachi nor the American press will tell you (thank you, Prof. Cole):

For security reasons, the actual names of most candidates on the 78 party or multiparty lists have so far not been released. This odd situation, in which the candidates are not known amonth before the election, attests to how dire the political and security situation in Iraq really is.

Preachers Beware

I'm listening to CNN's hagiography of Reggie White. I'm reminded of the statement attributed to St. Francis of Assissi: "Always preach the Gospel. Use words when necessary." Don't talk your walk; walk it, and let the observer make up their own mind. From Outlet Radio:

In 1998, White appeared in a full-page ad in USA Today sponsored by 15 groups including the Christian Coalition and The Family Research Council. The ad claimed to tell the “truth” about homosexuality including:

· The truth about homosexual recruitment in public schools and how AIDS activists have misused AIDS funding to promote homosexuality to elementary kids.
· The truth about raw political power and how homosexual activists are creating new laws to mandate acceptance of homosexual behavior in every facet of life from work to school to religion and making it a criminal offense to dissent.

The ad ended with an explosive quote from White.

“I’ve been called homophobic…and I’ve been called a nigger by so-called gay activists,” said White, without naming the alleged offenders.

White’s ad flat out lied about gay “recruitment” and was untruthful in its claim that gay advocates wanted to make it a “criminal offense to dissent”.

Fortunately, by the time White appeared in this ad, much of the public already viewed him as an embarrassing ignoramus. In an infamous speech to the Wisconsin State Legislature, White proclaimed that Asians can turn a TV into a watch, Blacks excel at celebration and dance, Latinos can fit 20 or 30 people into one house, and whites are great with money.

White can also be attributed with helping accelerate the growing trend of tying sports performance to fundamentalist religious belief. Now one can’t turn on the TV without some egocentric millionaire jock giving God credit for his touchdown. It seems half the NFL players have cheapened religion to the point where God is a giant, invisible quarterback who rewards victories to the team that says the loudest prayers.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it is great when athletes live their faith and do kind, humble deeds to help humanity. This should be universally applauded.

But the Reggie White school of prayer seemed to focus on chest thumping as much as Bible thumping. He was the high priest in the Temple of Intolerance, where his muscle-bound flock read from the Book of Testosterone. The anti-gay attitude exemplified by White and his holy-steamrollers can still be seen today in abusive high school locker rooms across America.

Towards the end of White’s life he seemed to regret how he sometimes misused religion.

“Really, in many respects I’ve been prostituted,” White recently told NFL Films. “God don’t need football to proclaim who He is.”

As reported in USA Today, White told ESPN’s Andrea Kremer that he had stopped going to church four years ago and started studying Hebrew. Former Green Bay Packers teammate Shannon Sharpe said that White told him that he, ‘moved away from Christianity and started studying Hebrew because I need to know for myself what my life holds for me.’

It is a shame that White did not live long enough to complete his religious journey. As great an athlete as he was, his supreme triumph might have been undoing the spiritual damage he had inflicted on gay and lesbian Americans. Unfortunately, many people will remember White as much for his disgraceful conduct off the field, as for his supreme grace on it.

"Unfortunately?" Sorry, a person's legacy is made up of the sum total of all of their actions. The word for a person who crows about their faith and then acts hatefully is "hypocrite."

Happy New Year

Suicide bomb on national guard bus kills 19 as bloodshed greets Iraq in 2005
01-02-2005, 08h40

Ali Al-Saadi - (AFP)

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Nineteen people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack on a bus carrying members of the Iraqi national guard near a US military base north of Baghdad, the US army said, as Iraqi insurgents made a bloody start to 2005.

"Sixteen Iraqi national guard soldiers and one Iraqi civilian were killed... when anti Iraqi forces detonated a vehicle borne-improvised explosive device next to a bus at 8 am (0500 GMT)," said US spokesman Master Sergeant Robert Powell, adding that two more national guardsmen died later of their wounds.

Six national guardsmen were also wounded in the attack, Powell said.

The dead civilian was identified as a female bystander on the road, which passes in front of a US military base near the town of Balad, about 70 kilometres (40 miles) north of Baghdad, Powell added.

The bomber also died in the attack, another spokesman said.

Earlier insurgents mounted a series of deadly assaults killing 13 people, including a US soldier and a Lebanese contractor, with promised nationwide elections less than a month away.

Two of the dead were beheaded by their killers, and one of the attacks, a drive-by shooting of a provincial official, was claimed by an affiliate of Al-Qaeda.

In a new year's message broadcast on state television, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi warned Iraqis that 2005 promised to be decisive for their country's future.

The warning came as US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage completed a two-day trip to Iraq, during which he held talks with the US military commander in Iraq, General George Casey, and visited the Kurdish province of Arbil to meet with Kurdish politician Massoud Barzani.

The visit came ahead of landmark polls scheduled for January 30, which will elect Iraq's first parliament since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

The 275-member body will be responsible for drafting a permanent constitution to replace a charter adopted under the US-led occupation.

Meanwhile, provincial council leader Nawfal Abdel Hussein was killed along with his brother Fares outside his home in the restive town of Baquba, north of Baghdad, medics and witnesses said.

Police also discovered the body of another council member, veterinarian Ali Herdan, dumped on a roadside outside of town.

Calling this situation "more peaceful, more free" constitutes uttering an obscenity over the bodies of those murdered. Which is, in fact, the Bush MO: hiding the caskets of the American dead and denying the existence of the Iraqi victims, turning real bloodshed into a pretend war, these are not the actions of a mature adult. The Boy King mistakes playing at governing for governing.

Mythologizing

Kos missed the best part of the Taibbi article in the Observer on Time's "Man of the Year" hagiography. Here it is:

Throughout the "Person of the Year" article—written by two of America's great Bards of Conventional Thinking, Nancy Gibbs and John F. Dickerson—Time strains to turn banal facts into great character insights, commonplace quotes into Churchillian utterances. It starts right in the opening paragraphs:

Eagles rather than doves nestle in the Oval Office Christmas tree, pinecones the size of footballs piled around the fireplace, and the President of the United States is pretty close to lounging in Armchair One. He's wearing a blue pinstripe suit, and his shoes are shined bright enough to shave in. He is loose, lively, framing a point with his hands or extending his arm with his fingers up as though he's throwing a big idea gently across the room.

"I've had a lot going on, so I haven't been in a very reflective mood," says the man who has just replaced half his cabinet, dispatched 12,000 more troops into battle, arm wrestled lawmakers over an intelligence bill, held his third economic summit and begun to lay the second-term paving stones on which he will walk into history.

Four observations about this passage:

What kind of a maniac puts eagles in a Christmas tree? Are doves no longer ideologically acceptable—even as Christmas ornaments?

How does one come "pretty close to lounging"? I imagine that this is a state of being somewhere between lounging and not lounging, but what the fuck? What would he have been if he were standing—pretty close to leaning?

When you say that shoes are "shined bright enough to shave in," we know what you mean, but at first instant it reads like they're bright enough to wear while shaving. Why not just say, "shined bright as mirrors"?

Are they joking when they follow up "throwing a big idea gently across the room" with "'I haven't been in a very reflective mood'"?

Or how about this lead-in to a later section:

The living room of Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas is a place for thinking. There are big windows for long views, a wall of books and on one side a table that is usually freckled with jigsaw pieces.

I particularly like this passage because it's well-known that Bush doesn't even read newspapers, let alone books. In the 2000 campaign, he carried around a copy of a biography of Dean Acheson for six months, in an attempt to convince reporters that he was a reader. In fact, Bush's utter lack of intellectual curiosity is one of the most newsworthy—and most easily proven—aspects of his character. But when you're president, and Time magazine is profiling you, you get credit for being a bookish intellectual just by having books on the wall.

Time manages to get through the entire profile without quoting a single Bush critic. In fact, almost all of the people who are quoted in the piece are Bush aides, many of them unnamed. This allows Gibbs/Dickerson to report such factoids as Bush's private habit of admitting to mistakes, despite the fact that he refuses to do so publicly ("Privately, he did acknowledge there had been blunders," the magazine wrote), as well as the stirring insight that Bush loves liberty even more than his aides do. "Every time we'd have a speech and attempt to scale back the liberty section, he would get mad at us," Gibbs/Dickerson quote White House spokesman Dan Bartlett saying.

But the best quote from an unnamed source was the one that compared Bush to the icon of icons. In a section talking about Bush's admirable perseverance (contrasted with Kerry's "slaloming") in the face of vocal criticism, this was Time's way of addressing the fact that Bush is the most loathed president since Nixon:

"Part of it could be his faith," says an adviser. "Being persecuted is not always a bad thing."

And these people think bloggers need a comeuppance?

Are Americans so desperate for something to believe in that the press has to turn this loser into a high school football quarterback?

Who's a Terrorist?

In a week where reading chilling things has become the norm rather than the exception, this one caused the hairs on the backs of my arms to stand up and demand attention. That Dana Priest can report this without any sense of alarm tells me about the low state into which our journalism has fallen.

Long-Term Plan Sought For Terror Suspects

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 2, 2005; Page A01

Administration officials are preparing long-range plans for indefinitely imprisoning suspected terrorists whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts in the United States or other countries, according to intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials.

The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions, including for hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts. The outcome of the review, which also involves the State Department, would also affect those expected to be captured in the course of future counterterrorism operations.

"We've been operating in the moment because that's what has been required," said a senior administration official involved in the discussions, who said the current detention system has strained relations between the United States and other countries. "Now we can take a breath. We have the ability and need to look at long-term solutions."

One proposal under review is the transfer of large numbers of Afghan, Saudi and Yemeni detainees from the military's Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center into new U.S.-built prisons in their home countries. The prisons would be operated by those countries, but the State Department, where this idea originated, would ask them to abide by recognized human rights standards and would monitor compliance, the senior administration official said.

As part of a solution, the Defense Department, which holds 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, plans to ask Congress for $25 million to build a 200-bed prison to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence, according to defense officials.

The new prison, dubbed Camp 6, would allow inmates more comfort and freedom than they have now, and would be designed for prisoners the government believes have no more intelligence to share, the officials said. It would be modeled on a U.S. prison and would allow socializing among inmates.

"Since global war on terror is a long-term effort, it makes sense for us to be looking at solutions for long-term problems," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. "This has been evolutionary, but we are at a point in time where we have to say, 'How do you deal with them in the long term?' "

The administration considers its toughest detention problem to involve the prisoners held by the CIA. The CIA has been scurrying since Sept. 11, 2001, to find secure locations abroad where it could detain and interrogate captives without risk of discovery, and without having to give them access to legal proceedings.

Little is known about the CIA's captives, the conditions under which they are kept -- or the procedures used to decide how long they are held or when they may be freed. That has prompted criticism from human rights groups, and from some in Congress and the administration, who say the lack of scrutiny or oversight creates an unacceptable risk of abuse.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), vice chairman of the House intelligence committee who has received classified briefings on the CIA's detainees and interrogation methods, said that given the long-term nature of the detention situation, "I think there should be a public debate about whether the entire system should be secret.

If the entire system is secret, how can there be any consensus that these bad guys are so bad that they never get a hearing? Which part of the population of the planet is exempt from the US Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man? And who decided it? Is this another one of those "executive decisions," like torture, that the President of the old USofA gets to wield at will?

When crap like this shows up on page A1 of the Washington Post, you'd think that there would be a hint that it is, ya know, kinda controversial.

(Cross posted at The American Street.)

Day is Done

I've just spent an hour and a half wiping the porn spam out of comments. I don't have the brain left to get my mind around this:

From Heart of Indonesia's Disaster, a Cry for Help
By JANE PERLEZ

Published: January 2, 2005

MEULABOH, Indonesia, Jan. 1 - A dozen towns that once thrived near here are gone, and so are 40,000 people who lived in them. Some 10,000 have already been buried, local officials say, but the effort to collect bodies cannot keep up.

For seven days, the scale of the natural disaster that swallowed coastlines in southern Asia last Sunday has slowly unfolded, with death tolls doubling almost daily. But Meulaboh, just 90 miles from the earthquake's epicenter, remained almost beyond description since no one could get here and the destruction could be only imagined.

On Saturday, the president of Indonesia flew in briefly and the examination finally began. It is a picture of grief and devastation beyond that of any other in the dozen countries hit. Apart from a few sturdy mosques and buildings, there is simply nothing left under the mountains of black mud and debris. As the president visited, the people he met wept as they spoke.

One man, Roosli, 52, sat near the entrance of one of the town's remaining building, nursing his naked 2-year-old son Bendi, who was the sole surviving child of eight children in the family. "When the water came I got out of my house and I ran in panic. I have zero left," said Mr. Roosli, a street trader. "I lost seven children. What do I need? Everything. Help us, please." Proffering a red plastic cup, he said a cup of rice was issued to all the homeless each day.

After his convoy snaked through streets of crumpled buildings, Mr. Yudhoyono admitted that assistance was slow in coming to Meulaboh and other areas in tremendous need, and asked the world for help. In Indonesia alone, at least 100,000 people have died, most of them here in Aceh Province, the government estimates, making Indonesia the worst sufferer from the quake and tsunamis.

Whole families and communities wiped of the map and off of the street where you live. Imagine that, I can't.

Are we doing everything we can do to help the survivors? That's the link I'll be following. If a man has to carry a red cup to beg a bit of rice, I suspect we aren't there yet.

On this New Year's Day, my heart hurts. Sleeping tonight will be hard, but at least I have a home and a bed, and most of these people have nothing, not even their families.

If you can give, even a little, the list is here and every bit will help.

CNN spent the day turning this into a videogram about cute kids and devestated beaches which ruined westerner's vacations. If you want to buy into that narrative, please take a hike. Do good or get the fsck out of the way. Lead or leave.

The Delusional Write for the Boston Globe

I don't know what planet this bozo has been on for the last couple of years, but it sure wasn't Earth:

Why Americans will be safer in 2005

By Dennis Bailey | January 1, 2005

AS AMERICANS head into the New Year still concerned about the threat of terrorism, there are a number of reasons they can be optimistic that America will be safer and freer in 2005. These include:

* National standards for driver's licenses. America's paper-based system of identification, long foiled by bar-hopping teenagers, will be drastically improved by the passage of the intelligence reform bill calling for driver's license standards. No longer will terrorists or criminals be able to obtain a driver's license from states with the lowest standards, as the 9/11 hijackers did.

* Integration of surveillance networks. From Chicago to Baltimore to Washington, D.C., cities are linking together surveillance cameras from schools, metros, public buildings, and roads into an umbrella of coverage that can allow officials to immediately dispatch aid to traffic accidents, discourage criminal activity, and identify potentially threatening behavior around critical infrastructure.

* Improved passports. The US VISIT program, which is being rolled out at air, sea, and land entry points, requires biometric passports from foreign visitors, including those from 27 countries where visas aren't required for entry. Already more than 330 criminals or individuals with immigration violations have been caught by law enforcement officials.

* National intelligence director. How effectively would a 15-division corporation operate without a CEO coordinating its activities? Intelligence reform signed by the president empowers a national intelligence director to lead a single intelligence community into the 21st century.

* Improved information sharing. As a result of intelligence reform, the Department of Homeland Security is to create an intelligence sharing network that spans federal, state, and local agencies and includes the private sector. A single information sharing network will make sure that the next time police ticket a future Mohamed Atta for an expired license, they'll also know about his expired visa.

* Registered traveler program. Travelers willing to hand over biographical and biometric information to the Transportation Security Administration will find an expedited trip through airport security.

* Biometrics. Although the federal government has been the main impetus for the use of fingerprints, iris scans, facial recognition, and other forms of biometrics, the private sector is quickly embracing it to help identify adults entering daycare centers, perform background checks on gun buyers, increase security at vulnerable facilities, or simply eliminate the need to memorize passwords for computers.

* Data mining. Analyzing large data sets for important patterns has been used by the private sector for years in areas such as medical analysis, financial forecasting, and identifying credit card fraud. A GAO report indicates that the federal government has employed the technology in 199 projects for everything from detecting fraud, abuse, and waste to uncovering criminal activity and, most important, identifying terrorist behavior.

* More freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan. Recent elections in Afghanistan and the upcoming elections in Iraq are bringing democracy to corners of the world once reserved for terrorists, dictators, and other enemies of the United States.

* Government accountability. This past year showed that the Founding Fathers' system of checks and balances still works. In separate rulings allowing Guantanamo prisoners to challenge their detention and preventing secret searches of Internet service provider customer records, the judicial branch asserted its authority over what many considered an unchecked executive. The new Privacy and Civil Liberties Board and a chief privacy officer for every federal agency assure that there will be greater scrutiny of the government's use of personal data.

This is so wrong that it is hard to know where to start: every point he makes amounts to 1. a major new invasion of privacy and government intrusion or 2. a blatant disregard for the truth. Afghanistan is still in the grip of the Taliban outside of Kabul and the idea that Iraq is more stable now than it was under US-supported Saddam is laughable. Government accountability? Don't make we laugh: the House Ethics committee, never a very fierce body, just completely defanged itself in an effort not to notice that Tom DeLay is on the verge of indictment in three separate criminal investigations. The most secretive executive branch in the history of the republic "transparent?" Do you think that Privacy and Civil Liberties Board will ever meet to do anything other than to figure out more ways to limit both.

This guy claims to be an information technology consultant. I don't think I'd hire him, his information doesn't seem to be very good so I don't think I'd gamble on his technology.

The Examined Life

The WaPo has an interesting project in tomorrow's "Outlook." Culture critic Phillip Kennicot introduces the premise:

If you're one of those people who use this season to clean up and throw out the accumulated baggage of another year, just take stock of how deeply a basic optimism pervades the house. In the kitchen, a little bit of desiccated saffron waits for the proverbial blue moon when you decide to color a pot of rice. On the bookshelf, Thomas Mann's "Magic Mountain" still inhabits its two inches of precious space, waiting for a long, undistracted summer to be given its due. In the closet, your youth hangs in between old winter coats and forlorn ties, waiting for the new you that will emerge from the gym and a regimen built on tofu and greens.

There is an optimism so fundamental to life that we hardly notice its presence, an optimism of essentials: We hoard and we plan and we muddle on regardless of a world that gives us little reassurance about our future. Our world is constructed of ephemera -- technology and entertainment and celebrities -- that we know will come and go. And often it feels full of dreadful omens. But before the mind darkens contemplating that glass -- half full, or half empty? -- the body thirsts, simply, essentially. So the glass and the water precede the philosophical messiness of the human condition. And it is comforting, and chastening, from time to time, to work backward, from the anxieties and ambiguous portents of daily life to the basics. What is essential? What will remain essential in . . . oh, let us say 15 years?

Outlook has put this question to six diverse writers. Our choices reflect, of course, our own most basic bias toward the essentials of life. We assume that a decade and a half from now we will still be essentially what we are today: mortal beings who struggle in the world to raise families, stay healthy, satisfy curiosity, amuse ourselves and leave behind us a record of who and what we were during our allotted time on the planet.

As Kennicot notes, these are essentially spiritual questions, the questions of meaning which arise from our sense of relationship with ourselves, others and All That Is. The link takes you to the WaPo page with links to each of the articles. There is plenty of fuel for lots of discussion this evening and into the day tomorrow.

I imagine I'll be quoting from several of the articles tomorrow with my own thoughts on the writers words. You can get ahead of me by reading, concurring or disagreeing in comments below.

These meta-themes are of much greater interest to me than the daily ins and outs of partisan politics. One of the great conversations I had with my brother over Christmas--in spite of the fact that our positions are nearly diametrically opposed--is the significance of spirituality and politics as ways of investigating our own world views. Without them, you have only the unexamined life.

One of my favorite theology profs called the discipline the tool for "examining our unvoiced operating instructions," the set of assumptions which we each carry around inside of us about how all this works, life, the universe and everything, to use Douglas Adams memorable phrase. By that light, we are all theologians, but not all of us are good ones.

Been Here Before

A Vietnam Grunt Looks at Iraq
by Morgan Strong

I once was assigned by a newspaper to interview James Webb, then the undersecretary of the Navy. Webb had been a Marine in Vietnam. We joked about the uniform, Jungle Utilities, we wore in the field. We were issued one pair. After several months, the thin material of the uniform became saturated with our own sweat, oils, and a variety of other excretions. It was if we had soaked the uniform in oil. The joke was that, since we were never given a change of clothing or a chance to launder what we had, we just got an oil change. It was funny as we sat in Webb's comfortable office, but it really was not very funny in Vietnam.

I feel like screaming, but I am too far out in the jungle for anybody to notice. I dream and I despair.

[Morgan Strong is a journalist who served in Vietnam as a Marine grunt from 1966-68.]

While the tsunami has blown Iraq off the cable channels, here is what happened today:

Iraq Marks New Year With Deadly Attacks

Reuters
Saturday, January 1, 2005; 1:53 PM

BAGHDAD - Iraq ushered in the New Year on Saturday the same way it ended the last one -- with a string of assassinations and bombings by insurgents bent on wrecking a landmark Jan. 30 election.

Militants led by Jordanian Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al- Zarqawi released a video of five captured Iraqi security men being executed in the street, part of a bloody campaign of intimidation aimed at scaring voters way from the polls.

A statement posted on an Islamist Web site along with the video vowed that the group would "slaughter" other Iraqis it brands collaborators for working with American-led occupation forces and the country's U.S.-backed government.

Signalling no let-up in attacks as the new year dawned, insurgents assassinated two local government officials for Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, and an Iraqi police major outside his home in the southwest part of the capital.

Iraqi police also found two beheaded bodies in western Baghdad along with a note that said they were truck drivers killed because they were working with the U.S. military.

Three roadside bombs exploded in the capital early on Saturday, with one blast killing an Iraqi trucker hauling loads for foreign contractors.

In the video from Al Qaeda Organisation of Holy War in Iraq, masked militants were shown lining up five captive National Guardsmen, their hands bound behind their backs, and then shooting them from behind.

Seems like a wonderful set-up for an election, doesn't it?

Live Blogging the Aftermath

Web to the rescue

Saturday January 1, 2005
The Guardian

The tsunami will, overwhelmingly, be remembered as a catastrophic natural disaster. But it also marks a milestone in the development of the internet. At first it was total failure. The information revolution that can extract or send data from anywhere in the world in a fraction of a second, failed to transmit news of the doomsday waves to those affected despite a window of several hours during which potential victims could have been warned. Somehow the world's fax machines, emails, mobile phones, satellite phones, internet cafes, computers and texters failed to link up in a way that could have warned enough people in the path of the tsunami who could have spread the alarm. As a result tens of thousands of people died who might have had time to move to higher ground. This could easily be solved and must never be allowed to happen again.

Since that early systemic failure the internet has turned itself into an angel of deliverance. There has been an explosion of web sites on the internet and blogs (online journals) helping rescue work and also raising money for charities at a speed never known before. In Britain £45m had been raised by yesterday, much of it through online contributions which might not otherwise have been made. Hundreds of sites have been set up, mainly by volunteers, to identify victims and to coordinate rescue work. Yesterday a website was launched in Hong Kong enabling internet users worldwide to upload pictures of missing relatives which can be automatically scanned against a database of photographs of victims in Phuket, Thailand. It may be expanded to cover other affected areas.

This displays the awesome power unleashed by the internet when its global network of communications is allied to the community spirit that drives so many of its activities. There is one more task to do. The web's army of volunteers must ensure that the follow-through is effective once the powerful but transient presence of the world's media moves on to another place. They have a big role to play through blogging and web cameras to keep the world focussed on the massive reconstruction work that will have to be done before normal service can be resumed. So often in the past promised resources have not materialised once the initial horror has waned. If the internet community can help keep the world's politicians on continuous alert, it will be even more deserving of our gratitude.

The Guardian's newsblog has links to the bloggers on site who are blogging the disaster live. It is not for the faint of heart.

Economic Instability

Plumbing the depths
Dec 30th 2004
From The Economist Global Agenda

The dollar has hit another record low against the euro. It is set for further falls against major currencies in the coming year, even though American interest rates will rise

FORECASTING exchange rates, warns Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, has a success rate no better than calling the toss of a coin. But the dollar keeps coming up tails. At the start of 2004, holders of America’s currency had to part with $1.25 to buy a euro. At year’s end, they must fork out nearly 12 cents more. In New York trading on Thursday December 30th, it cost almost $1.37 to buy a euro—a record low for the greenback for the sixth consecutive trading session.

The cause of the dollar’s decline is hardly a mystery: private investors have become less eager to finance America’s huge current-account deficit. The deficit widened slightly in the third quarter of 2004, to a record $165 billion, or 5.6% of GDP in that period.

America's Federal Reserve gives information on monetary policy and statements by Alan Greenspan. See also the US Treasury Department. The People's Bank of China, the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank give economic statistics and publish statements on monetary policy. The Institute for International Economics posts research and policy briefs on exchange rates and monetary policy.

These record deficits are adding to America’s foreign debts at an alarming rate. But as yet, America still earns more from its foreign assets than it pays on its foreign liabilities. That is about to change. As interest rates rise, refinancing America’s debt will become more costly. Goldman Sachs forecasts that net foreign-investment income is likely to shift to a sizeable deficit during 2005, growing thereafter. The investment bank estimates that, if America’s current-account deficit remains steady as a share of GDP and interest rates average 5% in future, net foreign debt-service payments will reach 4% of GDP by 2020—a significant drag on American living standards.

To avoid shelling out such large sums to foreigners, America will, ultimately, have to rely more on its own savings and less on savings imported from abroad. The country as a whole saved just 1.7% of national income in the first nine months of 2004. Households saved just 0.7%.

The dollar’s decline may force America to embrace thrift, argues Goldman Sachs. As the dollar falls, foreigners will demand more American goods. This will put pressure on America’s manufacturers, which are already operating at 78% of capacity. As supply is stretched, inflationary pressures will build. The Federal Reserve will raise interest rates, curbing domestic demand, and thus creating room for an export boom. The higher interest rates will thus promote the saving America has so sorely lacked.

This process has barely begun. Over the past two years, the dollar has lost almost 23% against the euro. But it has shed less than 13% against a broader basket of currencies (see chart), and it has not lost a cent against China’s yuan. As a matter of official policy, the Chinese currency has remained within a tight range around 8.28 to the dollar for the past decade. Forecasting the intentions of China’s policymakers may actually be harder than calling a toin coss. But many are trying. Offshore markets, for example, allow speculators to make a bet on the value of the yuan in 12 months time. At the moment, punters reckon you will get just 7.8 of them for your dollar this time next year.

Translation: the cost of debt is going up, imports are about to get more expensive and whatever little "recovery" we've got going on will be choked. Industrial expansion will slow, and the jobs drought will continue. This is setting up to be an economically grim year.

Elsewhere in the magazine, The Economist notices that decades of progress in class mobility have been erased in the US.

A growing body of evidence suggests that the meritocratic ideal is in trouble in America. Income inequality is growing to levels not seen since the Gilded Age, around the 1880s. But social mobility is not increasing at anything like the same pace: would-be Horatio Algers are finding it no easier to climb from rags to riches, while the children of the privileged have a greater chance of staying at the top of the social heap. The United States risks calcifying into a European-style class-based society.

The past couple of decades have seen a huge increase in inequality in America. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think-tank, argues that between 1979 and 2000 the real income of households in the lowest fifth (the bottom 20% of earners) grew by 6.4%, while that of households in the top fifth grew by 70%. The family income of the top 1% grew by 184%—and that of the top 0.1% or 0.01% grew even faster. Back in 1979 the average income of the top 1% was 133 times that of the bottom 20%; by 2000 the income of the top 1% had risen to 189 times that of the bottom fifth.

Thirty years ago the average real annual compensation of the top 100 chief executives was $1.3m: 39 times the pay of the average worker. Today it is $37.5m: over 1,000 times the pay of the average worker. In 2001 the top 1% of households earned 20% of all income and held 33.4% of all net worth. Not since pre-Depression days has the top 1% taken such a big whack.

The former stabilizing effect of a college degree no longer provides the leg up the economic ladder it once did. The social props (and social contracts) that used provide some stability for the working class (employer provided insurance, defined benefit pensions) and prevent the economically marginal from falling into catastrophe are mostly gone. Savings rates are falling in no small part because of the stagnation of real wages, as prices continue to increase. My income has been flat for the last ten years, as my taxes, cost of utilities and transportation have all risen.

How's by you this New Year's Day?

Thinking Bigger

Jumping to Conclusions Can Wear You Out
# Two scary experiences shape a rabbi's resolution for the new year.

By Eli Hecht, Rabbi Eli Hecht, vice president of the Rabbinical Alliance of America, is the director of Chabad of South Bay in Lomita.

Not long ago, I was driving through the Holland Tunnel in New York City when I had the strangest experience. The cars in front of me began to drop their speed, and traffic soon came to a standstill. With an hour left until Shabbos and being an orthodox Shabbos observer, I was really a mess. Driving after sunset is forbidden. What could I do?

Suddenly I felt a sharp movement, a shuddering in my chest. Could I be having a heart attack? I thought. I began to pray and in a short while things quieted down and I felt better. Then it happened again; this time I really became frightened.

What's happening? I wondered. Am I just having an anxiety attack? Once again I said my prayer, promising God that if I made it through this I'd be good.

As I prayed I put my hands on my chest and that was when I realized I wasn't experiencing any medical emergency. It was the new Treo telephone in my shirt pocket! I had received the phone as a holiday gift and placed it on vibrator mode. My son was calling me, setting the telephone off. What a frightening experience.

A second incident occurred when I was back in California. I took advantage of a beautiful sunny day, which was perfect weather for a walk on the beach. Children were running everywhere, and friendly people were walking or jogging on the sand. What a serene moment in my busy life.

Suddenly, a black Mercedes passed me and stopped. Two Middle Eastern-looking men stepped out; one carried a bag while the other approached me. My mind began to run in overdrive. They conversed in a foreign language, which sounded like Arabic. They may be part of a radical Islamic group, I thought. Then one asked in English, "Are you Jewish?" I was scared out of my wits, but I answered, "Yes."

The man holding the bag took out a worn Jewish prayer book and said to me, "I come from Iran and have just moved into the area. Where can I find a synagogue?"

To say the least, I was relieved. It made the rest of my walk very rewarding.

These two stories got me thinking about my life. How I jumped to conclusions without thinking. How irrational my fears were. In a peculiar way, my recent experiences have been a wake-up call to make an honest New Year's resolution to thank God for all the good things and to adopt an attitude of gratitude for the happy and simple things.

A happy new year. Amen.

Instead of resolutions, an attitude of gratitude. I like that.

There is so much bad news this morning that it takes a little effort to remember that.

Doggeral Democrats

Over at The American Street, Kevin Hayden posted the 55 poems submitted to the poetry contest he announced last month. In addition to being one of the Sunday contributors to the site, I'm helping to judge the contest. Go over and take a look at the wild creativity of the lefty blogosphere. Kevin has posted them in seven groups, scroll down. I have to send Kevin my top five rankings in a couple of hours, and I'd be delighted by your input.

Going Through the Motions

The bullet and the ballot

Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad

A month before the Iraqi election and Iraqi officials still claim they have the resistance on the run and that life for ordinary Iraqis is slowly getting better. Neither point is true. A better guide to the state of government morale is ministers’ enthusiasm for foreign travel.

In the Iraqi press it is a standing joke that at any one time half the government is representing Iraq abroad. From the safety of Washington, London, Moscow, Geneva or Dubai ministers speak optimistically about Iraq turning the corner after the poll on 30 January. On the rare occasions that they return to Baghdad they lurk in the Green Zone, protected by bodyguards from Western security companies.

Before Christmas I went to the Iraqi Airways office in the lobby of the Palestine Hotel to buy a ticket on the flight from Baghdad to Amman. It is the safest way out of the country because resistance fighters and bandits largely control the road across the desert to Jordan. I had to wait for my ticket because the man behind the counter was busy on the phone. I could hear him patiently explaining to some official at the ministry of planning that their minister could not have a first-class ticket on the plane the next day because, unfortunately, the cabin was already full up with the minister of oil and his entourage. ‘We should be called Ministerial Airways,’ he said impatiently as he put down the phone.

Life in Baghdad is probably more miserable now than at any time since looters were rampaging through the streets in the weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Then at least there was hope that conditions, however bad, would get better. But in the last three months they have got visibly worse.
....

The conventional explanation of the importance of the election is that it will allow the Shia — between 15 and 16 million of the 25 million Iraqi population — to achieve power. The argument goes that they will finally be able to dominate government after being politically marginalised for centuries by the Ottomans, the British, the monarchy, the military regimes and Saddam Hussein.

It will not be as easy as that. Power in Iraq today depends on military strength. The five million Sunni Arabs in Iraq are not going to end their rebellion because the Shia have a majority in the national assembly. The four million Kurds, the best organised Iraqi community and the big gainers from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, will not surrender their quasi- independence in northern Iraq or their control of Kirkuk.

The election is crystallising the differences between Shia and Sunni. The two communities are divided on vital issues. The Sunni are fighting the US occupation while the Shia are not. The Shia will take part in the election and the Sunni will largely boycott it. Iraq is still some way from civil war, but it is becoming more polarised by the month. Preachers in Shia and Sunni mosques are for the first time openly denouncing each other.

The war will go on after 30 January, with the US losing two to three soldiers killed daily. Iraqis watched open-mouthed as Tony Blair, in his surprise visit on 21 December, portrayed what was happening as a straight fight between ‘terrorism and democracy’. The main motor for the resistance is opposition to the US and British occupation. There is no reason why it should stop because of the election.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shia leader, has cobbled together an unwieldy slate of Shia political parties and dignitaries who have nothing in common except a need for his support. He has argued since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein that the Shia should not make the mistake they made in rebelling against British rule in 1920. This led the British to base their rule on Sunni hegemony.

The election will let the three communities in Iraq assess their strength but will decide nothing else. The US can stand up to the uprising so long as it is confined to the Sunni, though they do not have the strength to crush it. But the moment the Shia turn against them, their army will have to leave Iraq.

Security Alert

Windows XP users Phelled by new Trojan
By Ashlee Vance in Chicago
Published Thursday 30th December 2004 19:56 GMT

A new Trojan horse - named Phel - that punishes users of Microsoft Windows XP operating system is in the wild.

Symantec warns that users will see two Internet Explorer windows pop up when an .html file with Trojan.Phel.A is opened. If the code does its worst, the Trojan will automatically be executed every time a Windows user turns on his machine.

Symantec's security update page has more information. If you are running an XP box, be sure to update your anti-virus software.

You Can Help

Here is the link to the New York Times tsunami relief page with clickable links to the major agencies. The needs are going to be huge and they aren't going to go away for a long time. Get a head start on your charitable contributions for 2005 now.

The One I Feed

Our friend SME in Seattle sends along this Cherokee story for the New Year:

An elder was teaching his grandchildren about life and he said to
them, "A fight is going on inside me. It is a terrible fight between two
wolves. One wolf represents fear, hate, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed,
arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, superiority, lies and pride. The
other wolf stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility,
kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion
and faith. This same fight is going on inside of you and every other
human."

"Grandfather, which wolf will win?" The elder simply replied..."The one I
feed."

In the New Year Sky

Naked in the New Year

All five of the naked-eye planets -- Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn -- celebrate the start of Earth's new year by making appearances.

The ever-effervescent Venus rises with Mercury just before dawn in the early days of January. Look to the southeastern sky before sunrise to catch the bright Venus (negative third magnitude, very bright) and the fleet Mercury (zero magnitude, bright). You'll have to find a place with a good horizon because they are low in the sky. In fact, their planetary companionship is short-lived, since they both retreat into the eastern horizon in the middle of the month.

As dim as it is, Mars ascends the east-northeast at about 5 a.m. now. The faint red planet, at first magnitude, remains low in the southern morning sky through January.

For sheer visual joy, catch the giant planets Saturn and Jupiter in the evening and late night. The ringed planet climbs the east-northeastern heavens before 7 p.m. now. It can be found hanging out in the Gemini constellation, along the shores of the Milky Way. (You will need a very dark sky to discern the faint glow of the Milky Way.) In two weeks, Saturn rises in the east-northeast at dusk. This zero magnitude planet, bright, pulls an all-nighter throughout January.

Jupiter rises in the east-southeast about 1 a.m. early in the month, and rises about midnight two weeks hence. By late January, this planet, situated in the constellation Virgo, rises about 11:30 p.m.

Those of you in the boonies will have a big advantage over us city dwellers for this particular show.

Happy New Year

New Orleans Hotel Offers Hangover Expert
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: December 31, 2004

Filed at 5:30 p.m. ET

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- In one of those only-in-New Orleans stories, visitors who put back too many beers and hurricanes in the Big Easy have a remedy to help them shake off that dreaded New Year's hangover: Sara, the Recovery Concierge.

Name your poison, Sara Baker has the medicine: Ginger-root tea and a po-boy roll breakfast for the mildly hung over, pain killers and caffeine for those who really got sloshed the night before. There's also potions, bath salts and steamed water to rehydrate the weary -- along with sage advice on how to recuperate.

``There are two standbys that I never fail to fall back onto. The triple T -- Tylenol, tea and toast -- and Cafe Du Monde,'' Baker says hurriedly, her hotel bustling with New Year's traffic. ``I'm here to help people handle the excesses of New Orleans.''

Baker is in charge of the Loews New Orleans Hotel's hangover concierge program, which is spelled out in a booklet in every room. It is for guests who overindulge in the city's many excesses: booze, pralines, dripping jambalaya, succulent steaks, among other temptations.

``In New Orleans you're doing so many bad things to your body -- so you have to go the spa,'' says Leah Moss, a Texan lounging with her older sister in bath robes next to the pool at Loews getting re-energized for a turbocharged New Year's night ahead of them with gambling, a show and fireworks.

``Today we're doing hot rocks -- they heat up stones and place them on different pressure points on your back to relax tension,'' Moss says.

The idea of a hangover concierge is not totally unique; other hotels offer spa services meant to revitalize their guests. At the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, a make-your-own-Bloody Mary bar is offered at the spa, butlers are summoned to draw baths by dialing zero and full-body massages are on order for tired and drained guests.